The Season of Risks-Susan Hubbard

The Season of Risks
Susan Hubbard
Simon & Schuster, Jul 6 2010, $14.00
ISBN: 9781439183427

Ari Montero is a hybrid half vampire who played an instrumental part in finding her mother and bringing her back to her home where she reconnected with her family. Being a hybrid she has yet to find out what powers of a vampire she will eventually have. Like most of the Sanguinist sect of vampire, Ari and her family drink artificial blood; unlike the Colonists and Nebulists who see humans as chattel while the latter believes the species will become extinct.

Although Ari has the body of a fifteen years old, she is twenty-one and involved in a relationship with Senator Neal Cameron who as an independent has a real chance to be elected president; he also belongs to no sect. They keep their relationship quiet because of Ari’s official age. She allows Dr. Roche, a vampire, to inject her with the synthetic growth hormone Septinal. She soon looks like she is older, but someone shows her true birth certificate saying she is only fifteen to the media; destroying Cameron’s election chances. She is unaware that Roche is cloning people and inhabitant them with spirits. Ari and company bring Roche before COVE (Council of Vampire Ethics) to accuse him of illegal experiments but he turns the table around and accuses Ari and her family of heinous criminal activity. He insists they pulled the strings and defending themselves is not easy because they destroyed the evidence,.

Susan Hubbard’s wonderful vampire tale will appeal to fans of vampire lovers who love their vamps portrayed as another species most of whom are good and live like humans except at mealtimes. As a half human who is ignorant of what her extrasensory abilities will be since hybrids rarely exist, Ari must learn them while the heat is on. Her energy is invigorating as she discovers by trial and error what she can do. With a political sexual subplot that is very realistically portrayed, readers will enjoy Ari’s coming of age enthralling and riveting hybrid investigative urban fantasy.

Harriet Klausner