Every new recruit to the Helios-Ra Society is issued this guidebook, with secrets to the inner workings of the League the vampires they are hunting. But when new recruit Lucy Hamilton gets her hands on a copy, she can’t contain her inner snark-especially because she has first-hand knowledge of the various vampire societies that sometimes contradicts the conventional wisdom of her new academy.
Alyxandra Harvey is the author of The Cinderella Society, The Dainty Devils, The Drake Chronicles, The Witches of London, Haunting Violet and more! She likes chai lattes, tattoos, and books. Sometimes fueled by literary rage.
It was really hard to rate this, because it was exactly what it said it would be. Nothing more and nothing less. I just think that you don't need to read this, if you've read the whole series, because there is not so much more additional information in this. Lucy's comments also kinda failed to be as amazing as I hoped they would be. They weren't bad or anything, but they were just... exactly what I suspected.
Alyxandra Harvey has recently written several novellas to go along with her Drake Chronicles series, they are all quick reads and available for a reasonable price via Amazon for the kindle. If you don't have a kindle there are options to read the story on your computer or through various apps for other devices.
A Field Guide to Vampires: Annotated by Lucy Hamilton is the guidebook given to all new members of the Helios-Ra but with added snarky comments from Lucy. It does contain minor spoilers for the rest of the series so I wouldn't recommend reading it until after the 4th book (Bleeding Hearts).
The guide includes everything that the Helios-Ra know (or think they know) about the different vampire groups and the Drake family. It also gives you some interesting snippets of the Helios-Ra history and information about some of the most famous vampire hunters since the society was first formed. Considering this is Lucy's personal copy of the guide she obviously hasn't been able to resist adding her own sarcastic comments and I'm sure any Lucy fan will enjoy reading them. Although I enjoyed reading this I have to admit that it was shorter than I expected it to be, I would have liked it to have been longer and had expected to see more of Lucy's comments. It was still a fun read though and worth picking up if you're a major fan of the series.
I almost always enjoy guidebook stories set in a series world, and this one was no exception. Ever since Lucy and Solange got their hands on Kieran's guidebook in the first Drake Chronicles book, I've been wondering what that book contained. All of those questions were answered when reading this novella. However, I gave this story 4 stars instead of 5 because I thought there were quite a few missed opportunities with Lucy's annotations.
Such a fun addition to the series. The famous handbook. Lucy's comments are brilliant and really add something to what would otherwise be a fairly dull book. I would advise reading this book after the main series as otherwise there are a few spoilers. It was interesting seeing some of the things the hunters are taught and also noting some important information that wasn't included. A good book to read after the main series.
I've liked the other novellas, but this one was dry with too little Lucy. There were a few interesting tidbits, my favorite was the summary of Cass. I don't typically enjoy reading textbooks, though.
Another amazing e-novella by Alyxandra Harvey. Wether it's physical books or e-novellas, she always manages to write delightful page turners. This one is Lucy's guidebook, which every new recruit at the Helior-Ra gets. Of course Lucy can't help herself and writes notes on some pages of what she really thinks. And isn't that how we know Lucy and why we love her? I really liked this guidebook because not only we get more information about anything from the Drakes world, it's also hilarious with Lucy's notes. It's funny to see how her actual experiences sometimes contradict the Helios-Ra guidebook. Lucy is one of my favorite female characters in the Drake Chronicles so of course I love this book and gave it 5/5 stars! Now I'm waiting for the next Drake book "Blood Moon" which I bet will be fantastic as always.
This is supposedly the handbook given to every student at the academy with remarks from Lucy as she reads for the first time. But only the first third is actually the field guide and is made up of the information we got in the previous book. Now really anything new, except maybe Lucy’s class schedule. Even her remarks are not anything special.
The next third we get in depth synopsis of each of the previous books. While the last part are synopsis (and whole first chapters) of other books that Ms. Harvey has written. It’s a good way to see if you’d like to read then before you buy. The only one that interested me was ‘Haunting Violet’ but not enough to get me to read it.
So the book could probably be inserted in one of the other books and saved us money.
I am only going to give this 3 stars for 3 reasons.
1. Way to short......
2. Lucy only commented on half of it, if even that
3. This should be read after book 4, that being said I did not need a refresher on the books 1-4 (the refresher being the back of each one of those books)
I did like the new info though and of course Lucy's take on things.
First and foremost -- Lucy, I love you, and your snark.
Most of this we knew, but it was fun to see it all put together like a text book. My own Drake version of the Harry Potter texts. Color me happily reading through this, pouring over all the details grinning like a little kid, at my favorite series, even through the blatant bias of the 'text book writers.'
This is a good thing to have to refer back to in case you forget who's who in the books. It highlights all the important information and key players. It's not really worthy of any ratings since its not really a story...it's just a nice, handy guide to keep around.
Covered a lot of stuff we already learned from the books but there were also some new bits thrown in-which was cool-and Lucy's comments were funny! I loved it in Hearts at Stake when she stole a field guide from Kieran! Yes, that led to some great scenes...*grins*
I wish there had been MORE of this. I loved what was there though. An insight into Lucy's class schedule was appreciated! And I liked reading her little annotations through out the field guide. I'm just greedy even with my novellas and wanted more! :)
It was an okay attempt at a textbook, but the "quirky" annotations were sparse and not that quirky. Then the rest of the book was previews of the author's work, where her writing seemed stronger, but since they were excerpts, I just skimmed them.
Meh. After all of Lucy's references to this manual's silly fallacies, I thought there would be at least one, but no. This is a straight-up text book, and Lucy's occasional wry comments are no where near enough to save it.
Not bad if you have 99 cents to spare. Its very short but if you like vampire lore or a refresher on the world of the drakes its worth it. I wish it was longer and had more commentary from Lucy.