The Path of Razors (Vampire Babylon Series #5) »

Chris Marie Green is a former schoolteacher turned fulltime writer. She enjoys yoga and fangirl movies and TV program analysis, and also writes under the name Crystal Green.

Mean girls come in all forms—including undead. London couldn’t be further from L.A., but stuntwoman-turned-vampire hunter Dawn Madison knows that her job hasn’t changed—find the local vampire Underground and wipe it out. She and her team have located the vamps’ lair at a private girls’ school and now they have the undead on the run. But the vicious pack is starting to realize that its greatest threat may be from within its own ranks.

Meanwhile, Dawn finds her psychic powers—and urge to hunt—growing. And as unrest rocks the Underground, Dawn begins to fall prey to her own dark desires.

Publishers Weekly

Green's oddly schizophrenic fifth Vampire Babylon novel (after 2009's A Drop of Red) pits a team of vampire hunters against troubled vampire schoolgirls. While Dawn and her fellow human and supernatural stake wielders search London for bloodsuckers, Della and her cohort of adolescent vampires struggle to evade their stalkers while dealing with internal discord and betrayal. Dawn's half of the novel is filled with needlessly complicated backstories and romantic angst. Far more effective is Della's story, in which the mysterious guardians called custodes guide her to the revelation that just as she preys on humans, so too do some vampires seek to prey on the naïve vampire girls. Green has some genuinely new and interesting ideas, but the paranormal romance melodrama overwhelms them. (Aug.)

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