A review from my blog, written and published on February 5, 2006.Allison is a vampire, changed by the smoothing talking Seth. But now that Seth has had his fun, he leaves Allison to fend for herself. What is a freshly turned, and utterly clueless, vampire to do? Get a meal, for starters. Mica is a street preacher who has fallen, both figuratively and literally, upon hard times. When he isn't trying to spread the gospel to the lost souls of Hollywood, he's working as a barker for a strip club that caters to the furvert crowd. He knows that God has placed him there for a reason, he just cannot figure out what it is.When Allison, drunk off a wino's blood, stumbles upon the club and is invited into the fold, Mica struggles with an even greater temptation than mere sexual lust. Allison looks exactly like the one woman that Mica loved, both physically and emotionally, more than God. The reason for Allison's quick hire at Luci's Fur Pit is that the dancers are all like her, creatures of the night. Mica and Allison are about to discover that God indeed works in the most mysterious of ways.If you want a horror novel that will have you chuckling more than shivering, then Night Prayers is the book to read. It isn't all that scary, there are, maybe, two or three genuinely tense sequences, but it is a lot of fun while it lasts. The main characters are well developed, both Mica and Allison are likable and easy to relate to. Allison's struggles to both cope with and learn about her new way of un-life allow the reader to learn the "real" rules of being a vampire. (Yes, the novel is yet another post-modern deconstruction/reconstruction of an old myth with a contemporary outlook.) Mica's devout fundamentalist Christian world view could have become a one note Holy Roller parody, but author P.D. Cacek gives his spiritual struggle enough real world depth to make him a sympathetic hero. A real good touch is having his struggle not rooted in lust, but in the festering guilt for having abandoned his first love (a beautiful agnostic named Piper) to return to his life as an amateur street preacher. The supporting cast is given some good individual shadings, with the exception of the black vampire stripper Gina. She's just a walking, talking, and blood sucking street smart black chick stereotype. Can't have it all, I guess.Fans of Ray Garton's vampire stripper novel Live Girls should enjoy Night Prayers. It's like that novel's cute kid sister.
