I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It let me guessing right up until the end in the best way possible. Would highly recommend.

Kevin J. Anderson premise of a man who believes he is hunting vampires, but may just be a serial killer, is an interesting one.
Unfortunately, the story doesn't quite live up to the premise.
A largely detective style thriller with some horror elements, the book suffers from lacklustre characters and what feels like a rambling plot.
The makings of a good story are here - they just don't quite come out in the wash.

A Vampire Hunter, hated by the prey he seeks and an enemy to the world he’s trying to protect. As far that they’re concerned he’s a killer. The basic premise of the story. I thought it was well written but it felt unfinished. I got the feel of a fleshed out short story then a full novel. Overall an enjoyable, easy read.

A bit undecided on this book. I liked Alexis and she was a good lead character but I think more could have been done. But spoiler alert, I really didn’t like the ending of the book. It just struck me that if Helsing had been doing such a large amount of research into his targets, I wasn’t happy that the only ‘Lampir’ they have potentially found was the last one. Sorry if this has spoiled the ending for anyone, but I wouldn’t look to read any more of these books should they become a series.

Imagine you’re a vampire hunter, trying to eradicate an unmitigated menace. To the creatures that you hunt, you’re the ultimate enemy. To the modern world, you’re a psychopathic serial killer. When objective truth is blurred by personal perceptions, either extreme could be possible. And that’s the entertaining territory which author Kevin J Anderson explores in Stake, a fast-paced and playful page-turner about the potential existence of blood-sucking supernatural night-stalkers.

Blogger Lexi really wants to believe that there’s more to life than going gently into that good night. She debates and debunks weird experiences online, and can’t resist a mystery of ritualised killings. Serial killer ‘Simon Helsing’ is completely convinced – firstly that vampires exist, and secondly that he needs to exterminate them…

The story zigzags between these two and the sceptical police detective who is investigating this string of bizarre homicides – murders of nightshift workers and isolated shut-ins, people who rarely see the light of day. People who might easily be mistaken for vampires. Or who might actually be vampires.

To add even more intrigue, we meet well-equipped survivalists hiding in the wilderness, waiting for civilisation to crumble. They’re more than ready to defend themselves against vampires – or the federal government.

Who is the olde worlde reclusive gentleman, wildly wealthy, whose motivation for bank-rolling Lexi’s blog may be a lot less than ethical? And then there’s the seriously creepy pizza delivery guy who only comes out after dark. Lexi’s quest to discover if there’s something more than meets the eye draws her into a cleverly constructed conundrum, where these mysterious interests overlap. There’s definitely a lot at stake (…sorry!)

This was a hugely enjoyable romp which could easily have been the plot of an excellent X-Files episode. Stake cleverly blends the keynotes of gothic vampire tradition with all the existential angst of modern online life. Do vampires actually exist? You’ll need to read right to the very end to find an answer…

8/10

An excellent mix of horror and thriller that kept me hooked.
I liked the descriptions of the world of paranormal investigators as I loved the detective and the vampire hunter.
The plot is fast paced and entertaining, the characters are well developed and the world building is interesting.
It's the first book i read by this author and won't surely be the last.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This book was received as an ARC from Severn House Publishers in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

This book had both a Buffy essence and a Grimm essence to it which made the book more enjoyable to read. Reading all of the different characters such as Simon, Lexi and Detective Carrow and how their all on the same mission but have different paths to getting there. Ever line, page and chapter I was hooked. Could not wait to see what happens next. The book is extremely engaging and our community will be very receptive towards it.

We will consider adding this title to our Mystery collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

Stake by Kevin J. Anderson, a fun read that makes you want to keep reading. This book doesn't give you the answers, it makes you start thinking about what you are reading!

Lexi Tarada runs the website HideTruth, an online forum for people to discuss the weird and unexplained, everything from Bigfoot sightings to government coverups. Lexi is open-minded, she hasn’t firmly committed but, to quote the X-Files, she wants to believe. User handle Stoker1897 doesn’t just believe in vampires, he knows they exist and it is his calling to hunt them down and kill them. All Detective Carrow believes is that the morgue is filling up with people who used to work the night shift before someone drove a stake through their heart or cut their head off and filled their mouth with garlic. But who is right, Stoker1897 or Detective Carrow? Lexi doesn’t know, but she needs to find out. What if this is the one time the rumours and conspiracies are right?
Stake is told from three different points of view, Lexi’s, Carrow’s, and Stoker1897 who also calls himself Simon Helsing. It’s also told using flashbacks to Helsing’s life in the army and how he came to believe vampires are real. There are no points of view from a vampire’s point of view. In fact, there is very little evidence, other than circumstantial, to suggest that vampires are real other than what Helsing has gathered. This means the reader is never certain whether Helsing is the hero he thinks himself to be or the serial killer Carrow is convinced he is, and that makes for a really good read.
The story plays out like one of Lexi’s discussions on her forum. For every argument Helsing has that someone is a vampire, a paramedic who only works nights and has, in his opinion, a higher than average number of deaths on route to the hospital, Carrow finds counter-evidence, such as the paramedic’s continual requests to move to the day shift where the call outs are less life-threatening. Lexi straddles the middle ground, ready to listen to them both, look at their evidence and make a decision for herself.
If it was just a case of Helsing’s word against Carrow, we would probably side with Carrow pretty quickly, but Helsing is backed by a group of survivalist doomsday preppers, called Bastion, who also believe in vampires. And while Carrow has the coroner verifying the corpses are human, Lexi asks questions that challenge the science, like would we really know what we were looking for in DNA to separate human from vampire?
Stake incorporates characteristics from the vampire genre to play to the reader’s expectations. Lexi is invited to a party of a wealthy, reclusive older man who donates to her website, and her flatmate providers her with a white Victorian lace dress and choker. It creates a strong image of the original vampire stories with the innocent lured into the vampire’s den and is a lot of fun. It adds to the question of the story and what genre it fits in if we were going to do something as limiting as genre pigeon-holing; is this a vampire or a serial killer horror?
This is a spoiler-free review, so I’m not going to tell you. What I will tell you is I really enjoyed this and would not only recommend it to anyone who’ll sit still long enough for me to tell them about it, but read it again myself.

This novel has action aplenty and mystery. You will not be disappointed. The story will draw you in and will keep you guessing until the very end. An infinite thriller and hopefully the first of a series,

Hello Fellow Readers,



The Interesting concept of this book is what drove me to read it. First of all Anderson made me ask a lot of questions during this book, the most prominent one being 'Do the Vampires actually exist?' This answer varied depending on whose POV you were reading at the time.

Helsing, the vampire hunter in question, had me wanting to believe they were real. The evidence was compelling. I did not want to believe he was some psycho serial killer. We then have Detective Carrow of course when I read his chapters I found myself second guessing Helsing, and his beliefs. Finally, we have Lexi who is caught in the middle, much like we the reader are. She wants to believe in the impossible but needs to stay skeptical and logical as well. Like Lexi, us readers need to know the truth. I won't discuss the fourth POV mostly because they are not mentioned in the synopsis, but I found them to be interesting as well.


What really made the book interesting was that I couldn't predict what was going to happen. This is like a breath of fresh air, during most mysteries I typically guess the murderer/the plot and it sort of let's the wind out of my sails. I also, really liked Anderson's writing, he made each character their own, plus the plot was driven and believable (yes, despite it being a book about vampires). There were some boring parts, but this happens in books to set up the plot.


There were two things that bothered me, the first was that despite his great writing he repeated himself a lot. It almost made it seem as if he didn't trust the reader to remember what was said. The second was Lexi, there were moments I truly like her and felt a connection with her, other times I just wanted to shake her and ask her what the hell she's doing.


Overall a good book especially if you want a nice driven thriller.

I did enjoy this different take on the vampire/vampire hunter type story. It was a story of what if vampires were real and someone was hunting them down? How would we react to this? Would we believe or would we just think they are a crazy person? This was really interesting to me!

This book was very much set in the real world and its not really clear or not whether the supernatural is real or not. It is left very open to the possibility that these things exist but also that they might not. It was a very interesting concept, in most stories we kind of view the vampire hunter as the good guy protecting the world from evil creatures. But in this we kind of see a different side. What if the killer isn't killing vampires but innocent human people? If vampires are real then he is a hero but if they are not then he is a serial killer.

I liked the different points of view and the difference of opinions between the characters, we have the crazy believers, the maybe believers and the non believers. The characters also had some good background stories!

I did like the concept of this book but I do think it could have been better. It was enjoyable but far from perfect. I did find myself a little bored at times but overall this was a good thriller with a unique concept.

Vampire hunter or serial killer? That depends on whether vampires exist . . .

Simon Helsing (not his real name) does believe. He has proof. And one by one he is staking them out. Literally. 

Since a near-death experience in Bosnia years ago, he has tried to warn people about the dreaded lampir. Not many people believe him, but he keeps on killing them. They all work at night. That seems to be his main piece of evidence. He is also a contributor to the online chatroom HideTruth. 

HideTruth is the brainchild of Lexi Tarada. She wants to believe and is looking for proof of the unexplained. There are some nutjobs on there, but Simon reaches out to her with proof that vampires are real. 

The police have bodies and no belief in vampires. Detective Carrow is sure Simon is a serial killer. When the Vampire King (in Simon's mind) throws his annual gala, it seems a good time for Lexi, Carrow, and Simon to come together. But not all of them are coming out alive.

This felt rushed to me and the ending was abrupt and left me with a lot of questions.




NetGalley/ Severn House

My thanks to Severn House, Kevin J. Anderson and Netgalley.
I enjoyed this book. Alexis is definitely someone I could identify with. I believe in ghosts, spirits, whatever! I believe because I've experienced it. End of...But, I also understand why she is open to other possibilities. When weird happens, then who's to say that other things aren't possible?
I liked that she was skeptical, but ready to be proven wrong. That's me in a "nut" shell!
This isn't a scary book. At all! It is suspenseful! I kept asking myself, is Helsing a nut! It is he sane?
You be the judge!
I felt the end was anticlimactic. That was a bit of a bummer! Still, I enjoyed the book.

Famed science fiction and fantasy author Kevin J. Anderson makes an interesting diversion into the horror/crime arena with his latest novel, Stake.

Damaged war veteran ‘Simon Helsing’ thinks that he is waging a war against vampires. Colorado Springs detective Todd Carrow thinks that he has a serial killer on his hands who is targeting nighttime workers while they sleep during the day. Alexis Tarada runs a conspiracy theory website called HideTruth.com and thinks that both of them may be right. Meanwhile, a well organised group of survivalists are trying to keep below the radar in their hideaway camp in the forest and watching what is happening.

Kevin Anderson’s Stake is an enjoyable crime thriller that combines elements of the horror genre with that of the police detective novel. The idea of a modern day vampire hunter who may be inadvertently killing real people is quite clever, and Anderson grounds it sufficiently in the real world to make it work. It takes a little while for Anderson to put the various elements of his story in place, but once underway it moves quite smoothly and the ending offers some good action and suspense, and a couple of neat, if predictable, twists.

The highlight of the book is the character of Alexis Tarada, who, because of a childhood incident, desperately wants to believe that there is ‘something out there’ and has devoted her life to investigating the unexplained. She is a well developed and very engaging character and her website posts add some nice humour to the story. She is surprisingly level-headed and her actions drive much of the story in a believable manner. Thankfully, Anderson avoids developing her relationship with Detective Carrow in a cliched manner and instead gives her the opportunity to develop as a character. In fact, all the characters are well fleshed out and credible.

Anderson is an experienced and accomplished author and he knows how to keep the reader interested and entertained. He has a good understanding of the mild horror milieu from his time doing X-Files novelisations, and he is not afraid to make fun of some of the conventions.

Overall, Stake is a very entertaining tale that kept me happily engaged for several hours. Hopefully, there will be more Alexis and Carrow novels in the future .

Thanks to NetGalley and Severn House for an electronic copy of the book.

Share this:

I was intrigued by the concept, but the characters never really clicked. The idea that vampires are hiding in plain sight, and a rogue vampire hunter is executing them...fun times. But Alexis, who runs the HideTruth unexplained phenomena site, was just not a well developed character, in my opinion, and her desire for unexplained to be true led her to behave naively and recklessly. Overall, a very B-movie story. Thanks, nonetheless, to Netgalley and Severn House for the opportunity to read Stake.

Thank you to #NetGalley and #KevinJAnderson for the opportunity to read and review "Stake".

I have read Mr. Anderson's "Dan Shambles Zombie Detective" novels and short stories, so I'm familiar with him as an author.

While the Zombie Detective stories are written with tongue firmly planted in cheek, "Stake" is a different kind of novel altogether.

Alexis Tarada runs a website that exists on sensationalism like "Bigfoot" "Alien Abduction" Vampires Among Us", etc. Her latest stories are about a hiker supposedly attacked and sexually assaulted by "Bigfoot" and postings by someone claiming that vampires are real and live amongst us.

Simon Helsing is a vampire hunter/slayer, convinced that vampires live among us and must be destroyed. He meticulously investigates 'people of the night', those who work and live only in the dark; they must be vampires. He has quite the list and is determined to exterminate them all - including the supposed King of Vampires, multi-millionaire and philanthropist Hugo Zelm. Hugo is a supporter of Alexis Tarada's website, and has invited her to an upcoming gala.

Todd Carrow is called to a homicide, only to find the deceased with a stake through the heart; subsequently, he finds a victim beheaded with his mouth filled with garlic, and then another staked and set on fire.

As the story progresses, Alexis is further drawn into the 'vampires' exposé pushed by Helsing, and her path crosses with Detective Carrow who thinks that she knows more than she's saying, and might even be implicit in the murders.

The story races to it conclusion as all of the characters converge on Zelm's estate and Helsing's story is brought to an end.

I was and remain of two minds about this book. It is well-written and easy to read, but lacks a certain 'oomph' that some vampire novels incorporate; and it certainly lacks the humor of the Zombie Detective stories. But, I would still recommend it to anyone wanting to be entertained by a good story.

Stake by Kevin J Anderson is a fabulous, quick-moving story about a man who believes himself to be killing vampires, but may, in actual fact, just be a deluded serial killer himself.
This was a new take on a vampire story, mixed with a bit of thriller, mystery and horror. I particularly liked the heroine of the story, Lexi, who runs a website called HideTruth, looking into the weird and wonderfulof the world, hoping to encourage real discussion about the mysteries of life and gets dragged into the drama of Simon Helsing, the self-appointed vampire hunter.
Fast-paced, with page-turning quality, I highly recommend this read!

I really wasn’t sure when I started this one. I mean…vampire novels with characters named Helsing (or some variation thereof) are a dime a dozen. I didn’t expect anything unique. However, I kind of liked the idea of the website dealing with bizarre things and I took the plunge.

I’m glad I did.

While you start out thinking it’s kind of standard vampire fare, the author twists things a bit, leaving you uncertain about the truth of certain things. I won’t tell you what is or isn’t true – I’ll just say that the uncertainty really adds some spice to the read. I was so anxious to find out if I was right about things.

Fast paced, characters I really loved, and a variation on a common theme that I enjoyed!

*ARC Provided via Net Galley

I enjoyed this book but it took quite a lot of time to get going and I never really got familiar with the characters they seemed a bit tentative are usually love this author so it was slightly disappointing