Release date: 2015
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: Set in 1983, the priest is deeply troubled by a vision that he had at the end of the last book, The Dark Messenger. It told the story of the Earth dying and his unborn child Jenny being murdered.
As he riffles through the Ponerology sections of age old evil books in his basement, the idea of the two vampires called Kaine and Regina existing appears in his mind. Racing out the door of his office, he leaps into his old Datsun Cherry and pulls out of the car park intent on finding them.
Meanwhile in Paris at a convention in the Palace de Versailles, Kaine and Regina who have been invited to discuss the recent kidnappings of Vampires from Romania, find their lives soon to be turned upside down. Outside genetically modified WW2 criminals, armed with MX1 tranquiliser darts are waiting for them to leave.
Fast paced and full of demonic action.
The review: For full disclosure the author sent me an e-copy of this book for review and I was impressed with some of the imagination behind the book. I believe it is not the first book he has released in this universe but I didn’t need to have read Dark Messenger to understand this volume.
I liked the idea of the tensions between the vampires, as earthly denizens of evil, and Satan – hunting down those who don’t consume humans. There was black magic, mention of werewolves (I assume from the previous novel) and Nazis trying to harness vampirism to resurrect their campaign for global domination (though they quickly vanish from this volume's plot).
However the novel was flawed. Firstly it needed a professional edit. An edit would have caught the moments it flipped between present and past tense, the occasional grammatical error and malapropism and idiosyncrasies like setting the book in 1983 but likening someone’s driving to the “Fast and Furious” films, which began as a series in 2001 (and whilst the author could be speaking to his contemporary reader directly it still ended up jarring).
Unfortunately, for me, even such an edit would have struggled to assist the qualitative substance of the prose. I’m afraid to say that it seemed to me to be amateurish and needs development. As such I just did not enjoy the reading experience but I do want to say that the author must persevere, writing is something that does develop, he has ideas by the bucketful and can capitalise on those as he cultivates and matures his prose. However I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this volume to my readers. 3.5 out of 10 reflects the fact that I respect the depth of imagination, despite the flaws.
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