Immortal Obsession by: Denise K. Rago

 Similar to indie music, there is an off-branch of book publishing where the books published are physically published in low quantities while the largest margin are limited to electronic sales via Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble's Nook. Denise K. Rago's book Immortal Obsession  happens to fall in this growing market. Luckily, I happened to procure a genuine bound copy. For some reason, I haven't found the virtual Kindle or Nook editions to be irresistible enough for me to secure a transition from the old school format to the new school format.

  Suprisingly, Denise K. Rago definitely did not have immediate problems with engrossing us within the first severeal pages when our attention is fleeting. From about page one to page five, our attention spans are low, our base desires or Freudian ID is pretty overactive. So, it takes a talented writer to surmount these and fill us with only one desire to continue paging through her book. From the first few pages, I gathered the impression that Denise K. Rago was partially emulating Anne Rice's decadent, sensual style of writing. Ever since, Interview with the Vampire, has been published, there have been many imitations of Anne Rice's style. In the publishing world, whenever a large, iconic bestseller is featured in the market, writers become enviable and write books similarly to these authors to attain some similar sale figures to the best-seller. 

But, Immortal Obsession deviates from the Anne Rice style through incorporating known archetypes from many urban fantasy books. At parts, you can discern that there are elements of Richelle Meade and Anne Rice bundled in there along with Denise K. Rago's own unique interpretation of the vampire genre. Some people might even find the plot surrounding an enigmatic human girl with suspect powers being reminiscent of Twilight. But,Denise K. Rago's vampires are certainly not forswearing their chastity and their literary vampire nature: sometimes they can be quite the little nymphomaniacs.

Sprinkle in some fast-paced action sequences and back-stories similar to Angel and you start to notice that this book is an entertaining hodgepodge of all the author's favorite elements of the urban fantasy or paranormal romance genres. When I take note of this, I'm not criticizing her persay. But, I think the market is currently saturated with a lot of vampire books to the point where we cannot help but unconsciously involve some favorite elements that truly define this genre.

Overall, I did not find the book to be "poignant," or anything related to the term "legendary." In actuality, I found the book to be mostly a very entertaining read or a homage to the urban fantasy genre overall. Meaning, this book will not become the epitome of the urban fantasy genre but it would definitely be enjoyed by fans who tend to have leanings toward this genre and type of story-telling. Again, I did not find this book to be wholly profound in any measure. But, the book was definitely readable which is often a very hard comment to make especially since my attention does tend to wane by page three or four of many books. Unless, an author has an established plot line or some inkling of character development by page five then I normally don't even waste my time with the book. Fortunately, this book passed my hardest task of actually be a book that did not require dogged determination to finish. Yet, it certainly was not a book that will be memorable for any literary significance but that  stage is often very hard to reach.

So, if you're finding yourself vampire deprived this summer, I suggest that you read this book when in need of a good beach read! If you're expecting something that will ultimately replace Anne Rice then you might need to keep scouring the book shelves!


By the way, the author's page and blog happens to be here if you are interested in attaining more information about this book, click here.