Gothic Beauty review of In the Blood

You can view it youself here.

In the Blood
Jessie Seitz

Miranda Luna’s debut novel is a haunting look into a life of fetish, darkness and undying love.

Standing at a slim twenty-two chapters, In The Blood is a quick read but the story is one that sticks with you. Luna paints a tragic world that draws the reader in page by page, leaving you begging for more.

The story follows the character Zoe Starr – a writer, caregiver to her niece Spider, and a fast sinking heroin addict. With an unsatisfied love life, strange late night phone calls, and a sickness that won’t stop growing, Zoe slowly slips out of the world she’s built around herself. Her thoughts are consumed with her former lover Paris, whom she left behind ten years earlier. Paris has been calling out to her in dreams and leading Zoe back to him. But after all these years what could he possibly want? Zoe isn’t even sure if what she is experiencing is real anymore but something deep inside her presses on. What unfolds next yields terrifying truths, waking nightmares, and a passion greater than life itself.

One thing I find very attractive about Miranda Luna’s writing is her ability to balance real life and fantasy elements. Her sensitivity towards fetish blood play and heroin usage rings incredibly true, yet when a supernatural element is introduced, nothing seems over the top. Luna’s word usage is hypnotic and is sure to find a fan base in the Gothic community. You can pick up a copy of In The Blood for yourself at mirandaluna.com.

Please note that mirandaluna.com is no more; this is my author website now.

Fangoria review of In the Blood

Their website is down right now, but, lucky you, I have my copy handy:

IN THE BLOOD by Miranda Luna is a story about a young woman who the “average” person would most likely label as problematic. Zoe Starr has an addiction to heroin and a far from healthy obsession with blood, in her art and in her sex life, the two of which often over-lap and blend to become one in a world where fantasy, smack-high and dreams are quite difficult to distinguish from reality.

Luna grabs your attention immediately in the prologue with a healthy dose of sex, dream and blood. While wildly entertaining from the beginning, this story morphs from reality to fantasy, which caught me off guard, and I’m not sure if it happened in a good way or not, it just sort of happened. Because of all the drug use there is a sort of non-reality reality that is abruptly shattered when the story shifts into actual unreality. Also, the, what I will call, “thought communication” that occurs throughout the book can be confusing since the person doing the thinking is rarely indicated, slightly interrupting the flow of conversation.

All in all, I found this book very original and entertaining, with enough sex to satisfy and tantalize, enough drug use to confuse and tempt, and enough blood to make me cringe and mentally evaluate my bandage stock. With it’s harshness and whimsy, IN THE BLOOD delivers a fantastic reality that will leave you pondering the power of true blood lust.

3.5/5 skulls

In the Blood is still available on Amazon.com

In the Blood by Miranda Luna

From the back cover:

The trick is to hide in plain sight…

In the decaying warehouse performance spaces and dimly lit nightclubs of San Francisco, a predator perfects his rituals of blood and torture, creating vast landscapes of nihilistic hedonism for jaded aesthetes. In the Tenderloin, in a haze of heroin and loss, horror novelist Zoe Starr tries to reassemble the shattered pieces of her life, gradually alienating everybody she has come to trust. Their love is unspoken, and together they will become their own legend. A shared lust for blood begets a nightmare world of post-modern sacrifice, perversion, redemption and slow-decay.

Copies are still available at Amazon.com starting at $20 for a signed copy. Please do NOT buy your copy from Lulu.com; they are unauthorized and being sold without my permission. I do not receive any revenue from them.