First Published: 2011
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: The exciting conclusion of The Vampire Hunters
After being hidden away for centuries, the Vampyrnomicon, the Book of the Undead, is finally unearthed, and with it the terrible secret of the vampires' origins. The discovery of the Vampyrnomicon gives Drake Matthews the means to defeat the Master and eradicate the vampire threat, but it also provides Chiang Shih with the knowledge she needs to make her masters immortal.
Now more powerful than ever, Chiang Shih raises an army of the undead and creates a vampire nation in Washington D.C. Her attempt to assassinate Drake and his colleagues nearly cripples the hunters, but fails to kill them all. Driven by vengeance, and with his band of hunters swelled by unlikely allies, Drake leads the group into the infested city.
With the fate of humankind hanging in the balance, hunters and vampires wage the final epic battle in the streets of the nation's capital to determine who will hold dominion over the Earth.
The review: Dominion is the final book of the Vampire Hunters Trilogy, following on from the Vampire Hunters and Vampyrnomicon.
If Baker drew things down a notch, action-wise, in the second book, allowing his characters to grow and develop, then this volume reverses that pace change and accelerates into balls out action. I was genuinely very impressed with the pace that Baker lent his book, with any momentary lull nothing more than an eye in the storm.
The Hunters finally find the vampyrnomicon, in this volume, though they do not keep it for long. The book is revealed to be the vampire bible and Chiang Shih, the daywalking über-vampire from the earlier volumes, is revealed to be nothing less than the antichrist, born at the same time as Christ and living the opposite life, inherently evil to his good and daughter of Satan. The vampyrnomicon contains an incantation that will allow her to make all the vampires daywalkers.
It also reveals the way she can die, and that is by staking with wood taken from Christ’s crucifix – of course finding a piece of the true cross is going to be less than easy. There are new hunters introduced in the volume and they were perhaps a little thin character-wise, as Baker did such a good job rounding out his primary characters in the last volume, but the aim of the book is clearly one of charging to the conclusion at breakneck speed and so that can easily be forgiven. This was a very good conclusion to the series and is recommended. 7.5 out of 10.
The book can be purchased directly from Pill Hill Publishing or via Amazon.
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