First published: 2009
Contains spoilers
The blurb: Joe Pitt’s used to life in the gutter. He’s spent the last year crawling around Manhattan’s filthy sewer system, protecting the turf below where his love, Evie, now lives.
Meanwhile, above ground, a civil war rages. Manhattan’s rival vampyre clans have finally sprung for each others throats. The carefully maintained peace is forgotten, old debts are being settled and the bodies are piling up. Joe would be wise to stay out of it, but an old acquaintance will drag him back to the surface. And Joe will finally get the answers he’s looking for. He’ll see which of his friends and foes will be put in the ground and who will claw their way to survival.
This is a war with no middle ground – only winners and losers. But when the blood stops flowing, what side will Joe Pitt be on?
The review: If you read the blurb and thought that it sounded like an ending then you’d be right. This is the fifth Joe Pitt novel and it ends the series off. As such it is probably not the best place for a reader new to the series to start. The series itself runs: Already Dead, No Dominion, Half the Blood of Brooklyn and Every Last Drop.
The novel itself is tour de force, bringing into play just about every character Joe has met in the previous four volumes (at least those who survived the previous volumes) and thus the book careens forward at breakneck speed. That is not to say that there is no rhyme or reason to the book, there is a definite plan but the speed (and absolute brutality) is dizzying.
This might be a bad thing in other hands but Hutson keeps us on his chosen road and ties, I think, just about every loose end on the way. If I had a complaint it is that the series definitely finishes here and that complaint is only half hearted. Having become invested in the series I am sorry to see the last of Joe Pitt’s story but I am also glad that an author actually brings a story to a conclusion for once.
An excellent ending to the series. 8 out of 10.
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