I'm Glad You're Dead: Preternatural Chronicles Book 1 (The Preternatural Chronicles)
The Preternatural Chronicles • Book 1
by Hunter Blain
Why You'll Love This
Five centuries of grudge-holding, pop culture sarcasm, and vampire politics — and somehow the revenge is only the beginning.
- Great if you want: a wisecracking immortal narrator with genuine emotional stakes
- The experience: fast, punchy, and darkly funny — reads in a single sitting
- The writing: Blain leans hard into first-person voice — sharp, irreverent, and self-aware
- Skip if: you prefer serious, atmosphere-heavy vampire fiction over comedy-forward fantasy
About This Book
Five centuries is a long time to carry a grudge. John Cook became a vampire under the worst possible circumstances—watching his parents die while locked in a medieval prison—and what follows is an odyssey through five hundred years of waiting, surviving, and sharpening his hunger for revenge into something precise. Hunter Blain's debut throws readers into a story where immortality isn't a gift so much as a very long sentence, and the emotional stakes are grounded in something genuinely human: the need to make suffering mean something.
What makes this book work as a reading experience is the voice. John Cook narrates his centuries-long existence with sharp, self-deprecating wit that never undercuts the darkness underneath it—think hard-boiled cynicism with five hundred years of context. Blain keeps the pace tight across 224 pages, resisting the bloat that plagues many urban fantasy openers, and the blend of historical texture with modern irreverence gives the prose a rhythm that's easy to trust. It's a first book that already knows what kind of story it wants to tell and tells it without apology.
