Bloodshot

Steampunk and gothic author Priest (Boneshaker) dives into urban fantasy with this entertaining conspiracy thriller. When blind vampire Ian Stott hires thief Raylene Pendle to steal medical documents that may help restore his sight, Raylene learns about Bloodshot, a government-sanctioned project that involved performing cruel experiments on vampires. With the proverbial men in black closing in on her, Raylene follows the Bloodshot document trail from Seattle to Atlanta, where she teams up with a deadly drag queen whose sister was one of the project's victims. Then she heads to Washington, D.C., to confront the people who have revived the Bloodshot project and want to make Raylene their next experiment. Raylene's breezy, first-person voice and quirky views on life add plenty of bite to the story, but the lack of a clear-cut resolution may grate on readers used to Priest's self-supporting steampunk novels. (Feb.)