First published: 2020
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: Two warring species are at risk of extinction. In a twisted tale of love, hate and power struggles, allegiances and alliances shift dramatically and jeopardy threatens at every turn.
Vampir King Hades braves the Sapiens city to warn his enemy, the beautiful Queen Liontyne, that a virus threatens to annihilate her population. He is shocked that this sharp-tongued ruler doesn't care. But what affects her world affects his—and far more than blood is on the line.
Queen Guin finally sees a chance to reclaim her stolen throne and escape her vampir captor, King Necros. But with treachery and betrayal from all sides, Death leads and follows her and the price of her crown might be impossibly high.
The review: This is vol 5 of a series. My review of the first book of the series is hosted at Vamped. I have read volumes 2 and 3 but, unfortunately, at the time of writing I cannot link to those reviews as they were written for Vamped, who have not published them as of yet. My review of volume 4, however, is online at TMtV. Currently volume 3 is my favourite of the series thus far.
For those not versed in these books, suffice it to say that we are in a world – an alternative Earth or a distant future – where the world is split into nation states. These territories have Sapiens cities; monarchies where humanity dwell in what feels like a medieval/feudal setting and also vampir cities, built to escape the sun and daylight raids by humans. The vampir are turned humans but with their (mostly) expressionless faces and permanent black feathered wings they are somewhat different to the standard undead. There are also ghosts haunting mountain passages, their voices both audible to the vampir and maddening in their cacophony.
Getting to this volume and I think we hit an unfortunate moment in the series, not that the volume was poor – it certainly wasn’t – but my expectation as a reader has now geared towards the big picture, the impending nation level arc and the betrayals and conflicts therein but this book focused narrowly on the vampir King Hades and sapiens Queen Liontyne (with some focus on the relationship of Necros and Guin from the previous volume). The Hades and Liontyne relationship is drawn with mistrust and tragedy and there seems less of a fetished erotic aspect to this volume than the other volumes – though its till exists.
That narrow focus was a tad frustrating given expectation built in the general direction of the series but, it has to be said, it was still drawn with the author’s well-crafted prose. There was precious little about the ghosts in this volume – though a moment towards the end might cast a subtle hint of light on the reason for their existence. As I mention above, the medieval setting could be a futuristic one and in this, from nowhere it seems, we discover that (some of) the human cities are interconnected by trains. This was included without a reveal of the method of powering said vehicles and added to the mystique of the setting.
This is clearly going to be a volume for those already invested in the series, given that it is volume 5. For me, I wanted more of the bigger picture, as I’ve said, but it was still an enjoyable return to the author’s unique world. 7.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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