Predator & Prey: Vampire is the first book in the Predator & Prey series, and the last one I found and read. It took me a long time to find a copy of this, and when I found a shelf-worn copy at a local bookstore I picked it up, hoping the fact it was written by different author than had done later books in the series would make it enjoyable to me. Having now spent my day off reading it I'm of two minds. If this book had a green marble coloring and said it was a Vampire novel on the cover, I'd be singing its praises. As it's supposed to be a Hunter/Vampire novel, I have to say it fails miserably.
The focus of this book is on Michael Luther, whose childer dies on a scouting mission into a Sabbat-held city. There's lots of the usual political intrigue one finds in a story about Kindred, and a child-molesting female vampire who also violate priests (though there's another vampire who does that as well), there's the usual "humans are toys to be done with as we please" mentality normally found in Vampire books, though I must admit that it was toned down considerably from other Vampire books I've read in the past. In short it's a Vampire novel that I have to admit was probably the best Vampire novel I've read, though I've only read three fiction novels in my lifetime devoted to bloodsucking fiends (including this one), so that's not much of an accomplishment.
Sadly, this is not supposed to be just a Vampire novel. This is supposed to be part of the Predator & Prey series, a series which the back cover tells us "examines the Hunters newly arrived in the World of Darkness and the supernatural foes they have been created to destroy." Well, you won't really see any Hunters in this novel. You see the horrible manipulation and death of a friend of a Hunter who appears in the second novel of the series, and you'll encounter a young man who apparently is imbued in the interval between this novel and the second one, since he shows up as a Hunter in the second book of the series, but in this book he's pretty much just another victim of a bloodsucking freak. There's also a boy (the one molested by the vampire I mentioned earlier) who may be related to a Hunter from later books. But there are no honest-to-gosh Hunters in this book. I was doubly surprised, as the way one of the Hunters in later books is written up I was sure her imbuing was to be found in this book, but neither hide nor hair of her can be found in this book. I bought this book for the Hunter connection, but found nothing here Hunter-wise that made it worthy my money, or worthy of the flames motif found on the cover.
So should you get this book? If you're looking for a Vampire story, yes. If you're looking for a Hunter story, no. There's nothing here that's essential to reading later books, and if you've read my reviews of the later books in the series you know most of them aren't worth your time or money either. My Substance score is based on the idea that this was to be a crossover novel; if it'd been intended to be just a Vampire novel the score would be much higher.
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