Blood Blade (Skinners, Book 1) (Skinners, 1)

From the frozen North to downtown Chicago and to the rural hinterland--who knew there were really monsters among us? Pelegrimas brings a new element to the legends of "things" that go bump in the night. His dark world is inhabited by vampires that are not friendly and werewolves that you pray you never meet face-to-face. The only thing standing between the monsters and humanity are the Skinners-humans who fight them and try to destroy those that want to invade and destroy our lives. With humor and bloody battles, Pelegrimas kept me turning the pages way past my bedtime. And the end of the book is only the beginning. I can't wait to read the second book in the Skinners series to find out what happens next. Trina King

I am a long time reader on this earth. I started out with King and Koontz and have broadened my horizons with not so main stream as I find them much more of delightful change. Plus when you get my age you run out of books to read in the horror genre. We have some really great authors coming out lately and Mr Pelegrimas is one of them. This book is certainly not getting the praise it deserves. Blood Blade is packed with constant action and you will not want to put it down. It is not like anything else I have read. Unique in its excellence. There are creatures from other worlds thru out the story that live all around us.. But we cannot see them. But they see and abuse us. There is a small group of people called Skinners and they can see all these creatures and have different relationships some friend some foe. The Skinners are on a mission to keep this worlds people safe. They are few and the other world beings are many. The writing by Marcus Pelegrimas is excellent. There is so much to this story you must read Blood Blade (Skinners) and see it is truly a great read. Marcus Pelegrimas has a sequel coming out Howling Legion (Skinners, Book 2) I cannot wait to see what happens next. Ta.

People rate this book as average but I liked it a lot. I freely admit that the beginning of the book was more action-driven and creepier than its second half but it was nonetheless really cool. Pelegrimas has a great talent for description - the beasties were really scary, I mean really. The beginning read more like a horror than urban fantasy. Also, I really liked Cole. He was such a cool character, scared but determined to do the right thing, refusing to run and hide, a real unbreakable spirit. I'll be definitely buying the second book in the Skinners series!

While the frightening prologue of Blood Blade made me question if I could handle dipping my toe into the urban fantasy/horror genre, I was pleasantly surprised by this book's creativity, humor, and fast pace. I found the human characters to be likeable and real, not afraid to show their vulnerability but compelled to put the colorful, supernatural creatures in their place. Pelegrimas set a pace that kept me going and clearly answered my - and the characters' - questions with good timing. His wisecracks and occasional sarcasm kept me entertained. I'm looking forward to the second installment in this series and am eager to see where Pelegrimas takes this ongoing battle! "Crazy but effective," Walter said with a shake of his head. "That's a Skinner for ya." (p. 278)

I'm not sure why I picked up this book. I usually avoid series books like the plague. I guess seeing it was a horror novel by a first time writer (reading his bio above, looks like I was wrong) helped me overcome my doubts (and the super-pulpy cover promised lots of fun). Anyhow, I'm glad I picked up the book. The Skinners series is action/horror, very similar to Blade or Underworld. There's not a lot of real originality in Blood Blade, but the book is entertaining nonetheless. In an opening that is very reminiscent of Algernon Blackwood's The Wendigo, video game designer Cole Warnecki decides to take a vacation in the Canadian wilderness when he and his party are attacked by a gigantic creature. This leads him to a loosely organized group called The Skinners who secretly protect 'the normal world' from vampires, werewolves and assorted supernatural beasties. While there's nothing especially new here, Marcus Pelegrimas is a very good pulp writer. The book flowed right along, never dragging and not taking itself too seriously. There is a good dose of humor here. At times the book is very funny, though never so slapstick that it hurts the story. He has a good ear for dialogue which is believable (well, in a T.V. show kind of way) and snappy. Most of the characters are pretty flat, with no real depth or history being given for any of them, but Cole is at least sketched out enough that you can empathize with him. Hopefully the other characters will gain a little more background/motivation in future books. I do think the author needs to work on his action scenes. It's important that they be well written in a book like this, but I thought that in this book the description of the action was kind of muddy. Also, he never actually described what Cole looked like. I just assumed that he looked like the guy on the cover, but it did bug me as I read the book. I hope in future books he goes into a little more explanation of how the Skinners work as an organization. It all seemed very vague and chaotic here, though since Cole is sort of brought in while he was under fire, that may have been intentional. I do have to give Marcus Pelegrimas credit for crafting a unique spin on vampires. So there's not a lot that's new here, but I did enjoy the book enough to keep reading the series. While it isn't a whole lot more than a distillation of a bunch of stuff we've seen before, the personality of the writing makes it worth a read.