Gypsies. Vampires. Ghosts. I hear those three words, and right away I'm hooked. And Gypsy Blood has these plus all sorts of other supernatural creatures. But while Gypsy Blood is a fun, fast, interesting read, ultimately it falls just a little short of being a great book.

Carnival is a gypsy with a mediocre talent for reading futures and a much better talent for finding and disposing of supernatural baddies. In him, Vernon has given us another genre figure to add to those who stand out from the crowd. Like Buffy and Repairman Jack and Harry Dresden, Carnival is a man we can identify with, due to his shortcomings, and envy, thanks to his supernatural abilities.

The story begins with Carnival locked in battle with a succubus, and it's right here that the story gets off to a strong beginning, while simultaneously exposing what to me was its most innovative invention and its biggest problem: the ghost living in Carnival's chest.

It seems that Carnival's nasty dad murdered our hero's mother. In return, Carnival murdered the old man and locked him inside his own chest. Unfortunately, this means that now poppa can talk to son anytime he wants, and he's a bit of a motormouth, something son and father have in common. The old ghost is also belligerent and sarcastic, which often leads to comical arguments between father and son, often at inopportune times, like when Carnival is fighting for his life against a ravenous demon. However, in between vile insults and witty bon mots, dear old dad also dispenses nuggets of wisdom, which Carnival, like most sons, sometimes listens to and sometimes ignores, much to his own peril.

Things get even more confused when love walks into Carnival's life in the form of the beautiful vampire Maya. Within minutes, Carnival is ignoring his father's advice and not only hitting on the undead bloodsucker but also killing a man for her. The two begin a weird, love/not-love relationship with Carnival smitten but desperately not wanting to be bitten, and Maya slowly growing fonder of her 'real' man, however grudgingly. Neither of them trusts each other, but for some reason, they need each other.

Carnival, who doesn't enjoy killing, begins to search for a way to cure Maya of her bloodthirsty needs. A twist is added in the form of shadowy, hidden forces manipulating Carnival and Maya for their own reasons, reasons which they - and we - have yet to find out.

Gypsy Blood rolls along quickly; the plot is excellent, and the humor just biting enough to remind one of Buffy or Angel at their most snippy. These types of supernatural detective stories work best by mixing horror, action, humor, and a good dollop of old-fashioned gumshoe dialog, and in those areas, Vernon has done a bang-up job. It's only when poppa's ghost starts talking that I found myself frequently distracted from the story, because the sections of internal dialog broke the spell that the action had me under. Especially since the conversations between father and son not only involved whatever event was going on around them, but also had to provide background on their relationship and Carnival's gypsy powers, or lack thereof, in poppa's eyes.

Just as a character who thinks too much can hurt the flow of a story, so can a character that has a character inside him talking too much. Now, it may be that other readers won't find this a distraction at all; and I certainly wouldn't say that this is a reason to skip what's definitely a strong beginning to an ongoing series of novels. The first Anita Blake book had too much introspection for my taste, too. But Laurel Hamilton was able to grow as a writer and create better books, where Anita's introspection was balanced by the action around her, and the addition of other characters.

However, I wouldn't be sad to see Carnival find some kind of way to gag his old man in the next book.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Gypsy Blood, and I think Steve Vernon has a good building block for a series here.

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JG Faherty is a writer of dark fiction. His most recent credits include Cemetery Dance #58, www.wrongworld.com, the Bound For Evil anthology, and the Garden State Horror Writers' 2007 anthology, Dark Territories. He was the inaugural Fiction Editor at Doorways Magazine, and writes regular columns, book reviews, and interviews for the Horror Writers Association newsletter, FearZone, and several other online and print venues. You can visit him at www.jgfaherty.com.