Sangre – The Color of Dying by Carlos Colón

Blood - fuels us, repels us, kills us and also unites us.

Sangre – The Color of Dying by Carlos Colón is a story about the connections we are born with, make, or are mutated into. These become our family, our Sangre.

“One of the few good things about being dead is making your own rules and not giving a crap.”  - a behaviour pattern easily expected from the dead. Well the dead just changed their MO with the entry of Nicky Negrón, vampire extraordinaire. Nicky does make his own rules but he gives a crap; for society, for random acquaintances and especially for those he considers his family.

Overcoming a tragic past, Nicky settles into an idyllic adult life with a loving wife and two kids. Enter (drumroll please) a seductive vampire named Simone, who can control your mind and make you do anything, including cheating on your loving wife. Turns out that Simone doesn’t just want to get into Nicky’s pants but she also wants to turn him and make him one of her minions. In a twist that both life and fiction give us however, it turns out that Nicky has a rare genetic resistance that allows him to be a vampire while also retaining his humanity along with his conscience and emotions.

Nicky being the nonviolent type before turning, has a huge problem with the fact that in order to survive as a vampire he has to kill and drink blood.

So what’s stopping him from stepping out into the sunlight and going, POOF, Gone with the Wind?

The answer to this is weirdly the same as the predicament – Sangre/Blood/Family.

But alas he and his lovely wife are now “Alone in the same room but in two separate

worlds.”

So, since the love of his family keeps him 2^nd time lucky so to speak, he devises a unique approach for vampires, that is. He decides to kill only the scum of the world, the criminals from death row and the addicts that prey on others. All in all he wants to make the world a better place, which makes him kind of like a Vampire Superhero. And he does it with panache and humour.

Take for instance his witty thought process when he has to kill a criminal to feed off him “He’s no match for the demoness that made me what I am. He’s just a 280-pound happy meal waiting to happen.” Made me chuckle to be reminded that at the end of the day in life's cycle we are all somebody’s Happy Meal.

The story from then on is all about protecting his Sangre and getting vengeance on Simone.

And what a vengeance it is!

By the end of the book you are absolutely in love with the character of Nicky Negrón even though he sometimes goes and says lines like this:

“What is it about women that make them think that everything they have to say is so damn interesting? Any man will tell you how he would sit through hours of insignificant babble without a woman taking a pause for a goddamn breath.”

An absolutely mesmerizing book filled with such brilliant lines by the author that you can get a full book of life- inspiring quotes here.

Leaving you with some of my favourite profound ones:

“You are alone—alone in a room with three aberrations of nature. Aberrations that prey on people like you. But then again, you already know that.”

“I then realized that no matter who dies, good or bad, productive to society or general waste of human flesh, death will have its collateral effect on the people who are left behind.”

And my favourite one:

“The living mourn together as family and friends. The dead mourn alone.”

Hope you liked my fair and honest review.

Happy Reading:)