Undead and Unworthy (Queen Betsy, Book 7)

Betsy Taylor, Queen of the Vampires, has barely settled after her honeymoon when the Fiends come barreling through her door. The Fiends are vampires who were made by the previous King and left to starve. They are a bit like feral animals, but Betsy being the unusual Vampire Queen that she is, refused to stake them. They have been living on a farm being tended to by another vamp, being fed animal blood. But it seems with all the craziness of Queenly and wifely duties, Betsy sort of forgot about them and they're not happy.

MaryJanice Davidson has a fabulous sense of humor, no doubt. Her characters are always wonderful to read and I have been a fan of this series since day one. This book contains the same humor and sarcasm I have come to enjoy and look forward to. The cast of characters is rich and eclectic, and the family Betsy surrounds herself with is phenomenal, to say the least. So I find myself wondering why I didn't love this book like I have all the others and find I have two reasons:

1) I wasn't drawn into the story like I usually am. The beauty of an MJD book is that they are usually short on length but filled to the brim on content. This one, to me, was not. I just didn't have the "I can't put this book down" excitement I usually have.

2) I hated the ending, HATED it. I can't say why without spoiling things but let's just say I am devastated x 2.

It's still not a bad book and I am still looking forward to the next, but this one wasn't all I had hoped it would be.

Cherise Everhard, July 2008

I have loved this series since the beginning, so I was looking forward to the latest entry (pre-ordered it and everything). What a letdown! The humor and interesting characters that populate prior books are gone. This book takes a serious and depressing turn that doesn't fit with earlier entries in this series. Plus, characters that I looked forward to seeing were tossed aside in a most callous manner. This book betrays long time fans.

!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!

I am a huge MJD fan and have to say that, despite the preface mentioning a new story arc, my final thought when I finished the book was "What the hell just happened?".

I enjoyed the book, don't get me wrong. However, I often felt like I was reading the script from some daytime soap opera because characters were popping up and biting the dust left and right. Three secondary characters were killed off (don't forget Alice - in addition to Garrett & Antonia - she was with us from the first book!). Fiends were rising up for justice and getting mowed down pretty quickly. The ghost of The Ant was back, but for no reason that was ever really explained. We also discovered that Nick The Cop is mega-rich (am I the only one who vaguely remembers him saving money by vacationing with his buddies a few books ago, but now he is a trust fund baby - hello!!!). Think of it as, As The Blood Flows, Episode 7...... A few good laughs with death, drama, and cheesy moments all rolled into a hardcover package for your enjoyment.

Overall, the book was quite good, but it was definitely darker than the others in the series. Betsy is starting to come into her own as Queen and that isn't a bad thing - it just may take some getting used to. Most Betsy fans will be happy to follow along for the ride and see where this literary train is headed. If you are thinking this will be a light read, along the lines of the first two books in the series, you will probably be disappointed.

At the conclusion of the book, I still had one overall nagging question that was left unanswered. Who was smoking crack in the art department the day this book's cover was approved? We may never know.

Let me start off by saying i have read every mjd book out there. And betsy started of very strong as a series but i would not spend money on the hard cover books. I get mine from the library because they are just not worth the cash. The book goes into to many directions without getting to the point and the end fells rushed. I hope her next one is better then this. I miss the lol in this and the last book.

MJD points out in her introduction that the new cover of UNDEAD AND UNWORTHY reflects the new direction that this book and the two upcoming ones will follow; a mini-story arc within a story arc. Frankly, I'm not all that thrilled.

Betsy is still Betsy -- still childish, still prone to immaturity, still interested with having sex with her new husband as often as possible, still the new guardian of Baby Jon (although he's conspicuously missing from this installment), still back-and-forth with best friend Jessica, still vampire-non-grata for Detective Nick.

It's all still there, with a bit of humor thrown in, and a new weird sideline into what I guess is the aforementioned "arc."

My biggest complaint with the story was the fact that, although after seven books I realize that MJD never goes into much description for ANYTHING, I was shocked that there was a major (and majorly depressing) conclusion to the book that was summed up in about three pages.

I hate that. Really. I don't expect the author to go into intricate detail (a la Stephen King) of description, dialogue, and backstory (as I said, it's not MJD's trademark), but just a few pages when you've seriously lessened the number of main characters??

Okay, overall, I didn't mind spending 2 1/2 hours reading UNDEAD AND UNWORTHY. And I'll still follow the series, even though it's not as great as it once was (basically, during the first two books). But I'm putting MJD on notice that, really, it's just not right to indiscriminately kill off some of my favorite characters.