Night Road – Éjjeli Utazás (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
Night Road by A.M. Jenkins is the story about Cole and Sandor training a new heme, Gordon. A heme is a person that only feeds on blood of ordinary humans. The main character Cole starts to remember his memories from when he was still a human, and he discovers things that he never knew about himself while traveling with his new companions. Although this book is rich with detail and words, I would never want to recommend Night Road to anyone. One reason why I didn't like the book is that I felt the story was very slow paced. The author over described too many things. People will argue that details are necessary to get the reader have an idea what's happening and to create an image in the reader's mind. However, over describing made the book seem boring and that the details were only meant to make the story longer. As a reader, I felt like skipping some pages, because the details were stretched too much. When Cole decided to wash his clothes in the basement in the building where most New York hemes lived, the author describes the basement in so much detail like "it was musty at the bottom of the wooden steps. The sides of the room were crowded with trunks, boxes, and artifacts left over from past wanderings of the New York City hemes" (80). After he finished describing that, the writer goes on describing a light bulb in the middle of the room "making a circle of light that dimmed before it reached the corners" (80). The author is describing what he main character is seeing, but I don't think he needs a whole page to describe something unimportant that will only be mentioned once. The second reason why I didn't like this book was there wasn't a lot of suspense. I was expecting a big conflict because in the beginning of the book, Cole seemed like he was in such a hurry, and there seemed like there was a big crisis in the building. The character also seemed to think something was going on. "Of course, he had not tried to find out what it was all about. He'd felt a vague discomfort licking at him, but rather than ask Johnny why he wanted him to come in, Cole asked instead" Is everything alright?" (7). The author could've used this suspense that he build up at the beginning of the book to make the plot seem more interesting, but instead he talks about how the hemes and humans interact and how the main character is getting used being back to the building after a few decades. It was disappointing to see these potentials go to waste. Another thing that was disappointing about the book was the plot. The events were very predictable. It wasn't enjoyable because anyone who has read vampire books before probably at least for saw one event, almost always there will be some sort of stabbing or bloodshed in the book. When Cole found a heme wandering at a bar, he pretended he was a new heme. He follows this new character, Royal into his "lair," and they have this conversation, "to watch the spark go out of them. The eyes go glossy of course, as if they can't see" (341). The talk about humans dying when they suck their blood, and Royal seemed really into this conversation. Then the next day, Royal just magically disappears. I thought it was weird how Royal suddenly disappears the next day without meeting Sandor and Gordon. While Cole and Royal talked, he seemed like he was enjoying the company, how he really got into talking about seeing the life being drained away from the human. However, towards the end of the book, Royal appears out of nowhere in Cole's hotel room after the trio made sure to lose any pursers. "There was no time to feel fear-just to glimpse Royal's coolly determined face and the descending hammer-before a crack of pain in Cole's chest" (341). I was expecting Royal to stab him. Because of his sudden disappearance, I knew he was going to come back into the book and do something bad to one of the trio. People might think it's a good thing to have events that are similar to other books to happen, because the reader would be familiar with it, but the author doesn't put his own twist to it to make it stand out from other books. Night Road has many beautiful pieces of writing like the details of Cole's life, but I think the author does too much. The details that were put into the book made the book seem like it was meant to only fill up empty pages. The plot doesn't have a lot of actions which also contributed to the book feeling really slow and boring to the reader. Finally, the plot was very predictable in my opinion. The author could've used some situations to give the book a little more thrill to it, but I felt like the author wasted those chances. Overall the book was boring, and there wasn't enough elements to really pull the reader in. The only reason this isn't a 4 star book for me is that part of Cole's characterization relies on a hobby that's totally unrealistic and is never plausibly explained. And also I don't understand why the hemes didn't just buy a camper or airstream trailer instead of staying in hotel rooms. Maybe because it would be too suspicious?OTHERWISE Jenkins does an amazing job making her hemevores sound ancient - I kept forgetting they were housed in young-looking bodies. And she makes the new heme believably new. And the meeting with the stray is wonderfully hilarious and scary at the same time. I'll be recommending this all over the place to fans of True Blood, Peeps by Westerfeld, Thirsty by Anderson... you see in which category it belongs. Good vampire books.
What do You think about Night Road – Éjjeli Utazás (2009)?
Interesting, and a nice new take on the whole " vampire" thing.
—nnck25
really bad !! I couldnt get past the first 3 chapters!!
—jesszeng
