Axel Taiari’s A Light To Starve By is the epitome of Vampire Noir.  We are at once thrust into a nightmare set in the near future in the world’s most beautiful city, Paris, France. Vampires and Werewolves are common knowledge. They rule the night. The Church goes military, developing a vaccine to keep the humans safe, and training mercs to take down the vampires any way possible.

Axel knows he’s not reinventing wheel with these vampires. He just maxed the horsepower and peaked the torque on that wheel and pushed the genre to its limits. His vampires have bite, and generally see humans as a food source. Violence reigns, but that’s not what will keep you reading. It’s unpredictable yet logical, which is the very definition of creating legendary fiction. And there’s love. This is not your sister’s Twilight, not your Sookie Stackhouse fang-banger wet dream. This is the future of the vampire, where the fearsome creature of the night comes full circle, poisoning our nightmares and making us afraid to be alone in the dark.

Let us hope that Axel can bring us more from this hellish world he’s created. We need it.