Ethical vampire Amber Fang is on the hunt for her mother, for answers about her identity, and for a murderer to have for dinner. Everybody seems to have plans for her, and most of them she’d very much like to avoid.

Amber Fang: Betrayal continues the theme of searching for family from Amber Fang: The Hunted and starts calculating the price of finding them. Amber Fang herself is reduced to a wise-cracking kicking machine, flamboyantly unreliable and a danger to everyone around her. She is single-minded in pursuit, like a terrier dragging its leash, and incapable of caring that somebody chases her into traffic until long after they’ve been squished by a bus. Even then, I’m beginning to worry that she doesn’t care as much as she claims to.

Liking Amber Fang herself a bit less than I used to is where I am about most of Amber Fang: Betrayal. The sequel is less smooth, less apparently effortless, less polished than Amber Fang: The Hunted. There are unexpected clusters of copy editing problems that make the novel feel scrambly and rushed. It’s not a bad novel; I just can’t love it, no matter how much I wanted to.

But. There is a reveal in Amber Fang: Betrayal that is such a standout, that is so glittery and magical, that I will follow it anywhere. I will follow it to Amber Fang #3, into its own series, to the ends of the earth. I will think about it all day. Author Arthur Slade will be my favourite person for at least the next few hours.

Amber Fang: Betrayal can be read without having read Amber Fang: The Hunted first. The recap is laid out within the story and is complete as far as I can tell. But don’t do that. Read Amber Fang: The Hunted first.