A solid, enduring, addictive vampire epic with great potential that readers should be thrilled to sink their teeth into.
A vampire yarn combines passion, melodrama, and a legacy of bloodlust.
In this opening installment of his vampire saga, entrepreneur and prolific fantasy novelist Perlow (Golden Dragons, Gilded Age, 2015, etc.) finds inspiration in the Gothic environs of New Orleans, creating a world where two factions dominate. Spectavi vampires are a well-organized cabal, led by overlord Edmond, who drink synthetic blood, while the Sanguans are hunters, purely liberated, who crave the real thing. Sanguan vampire Ethan roams the streets, quenching his thirst. The love of his life, Ellie, a mortal who refused to become a vampire, lies dying in a coma, and he is determined to find a cure through a unique blood type that has curative, regenerative properties. This extraordinary blood belongs to recently divorced John Breen, a tall, thin mortal traveling across Europe to soothe his broken heart at Sanguan nightclubs, where he enjoys the bites of random vampires who relish his exclusive plasma. He becomes known in vampire circles as the man with “blood like that of a god,” and there’s a race between factions to access his lifesaving fluid. He meets Vera, a Spectavi scientist, who becomes embroiled in his situation, which turns complicated once he learns of his “savior” status and the medical impact his blood could have on the terminally ill. In a singular twist, blood drinking also affords vampires the ability to absorb the host’s memories, which adds tension to the frantic intent to obtain John’s blood. Character-driven and written with brio and an obvious love of everything vampiric, this tale does an expert job of conjuring a fantasy world, incorporating the eternally warring factions—with vivid tidbits about sexless, coffin-dwelling vampires—and tracing the moves of a population that harbors centuries of rich, dramatic histories and for which love and life still reign supreme. An intriguing back story embellishes the main plot with lush details and centuries-old lore about blood lineages, long-held animosities, and the struggle for social dominance. As the story evolves, Ethan turns violently desperate to save his true love, as other characters become enmeshed in the plot with their fangs out. This genre-reviving inaugural entry is cleverly paced and plotted with serpentine flourishes and enough action and romance to satisfy fans of Anne Rice as well as fantasy readers.
A solid, enduring, addictive vampire epic with great potential that readers should be thrilled to sink their teeth into.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Bealion Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet...
Four Chicago sisters anchor a sharp, sly family story of feminine guile and guilt.
Newcomer Lombardo brews all seven deadly sins into a fun and brimming tale of an unapologetically bougie couple and their unruly daughters. In the opening scene, Liza Sorenson, daughter No. 3, flirts with a groomsman at her sister’s wedding. “There’s four of you?” he asked. “What’s that like?” Her retort: “It’s a vast hormonal hellscape. A marathon of instability and hair products.” Thus begins a story bristling with a particular kind of female intel. When Wendy, the oldest, sets her sights on a mate, she “made sure she left her mark throughout his house—soy milk in the fridge, box of tampons under the sink, surreptitious spritzes of her Bulgari musk on the sheets.” Turbulent Wendy is the novel’s best character, exuding a delectable bratty-ness. The parents—Marilyn, all pluck and busy optimism, and David, a genial family doctor—strike their offspring as impossibly happy. Lombardo levels this vision by interspersing chapters of the Sorenson parents’ early lean times with chapters about their daughters’ wobbly forays into adulthood. The central story unfurls over a single event-choked year, begun by Wendy, who unlatches a closed adoption and springs on her family the boy her stuffy married sister, Violet, gave away 15 years earlier. (The sisters improbably kept David and Marilyn clueless with a phony study-abroad scheme.) Into this churn, Lombardo adds cancer, infidelity, a heart attack, another unplanned pregnancy, a stillbirth, and an office crush for David. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Grace perpetrates a whopper, and “every day the lie was growing like mold, furring her judgment.” The writing here is silky, if occasionally overwrought. Still, the deft touches—a neighborhood fundraiser for a Little Free Library, a Twilight character as erotic touchstone—delight. The class calibrations are divine even as the utter apolitical whiteness of the Sorenson world becomes hard to fathom.
Characters flip between bottomless self-regard and pitiless self-loathing while, as late as the second-to-last chapter, yet another pleasurable tendril of sisterly malice uncurls.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54425-2
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.
Ten years after her teenage daughter went missing, a mother begins a new relationship only to discover she can't truly move on until she answers lingering questions about the past.
Laurel Mack’s life stopped in many ways the day her 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, left the house to study at the library and never returned. She drifted away from her other two children, Hanna and Jake, and eventually she and her husband, Paul, divorced. Ten years later, Ellie’s remains and her backpack are found, though the police are unable to determine the reasons for her disappearance and death. After Ellie’s funeral, Laurel begins a relationship with Floyd, a man she meets in a cafe. She's disarmed by Floyd’s charm, but when she meets his young daughter, Poppy, Laurel is startled by her resemblance to Ellie. As the novel progresses, Laurel becomes increasingly determined to learn what happened to Ellie, especially after discovering an odd connection between Poppy’s mother and her daughter even as her relationship with Floyd is becoming more serious. Jewell’s (I Found You, 2017, etc.) latest thriller moves at a brisk pace even as she plays with narrative structure: The book is split into three sections, including a first one which alternates chapters between the time of Ellie’s disappearance and the present and a second section that begins as Laurel and Floyd meet. Both of these sections primarily focus on Laurel. In the third section, Jewell alternates narrators and moments in time: The narrator switches to alternating first-person points of view (told by Poppy’s mother and Floyd) interspersed with third-person narration of Ellie’s experiences and Laurel’s discoveries in the present. All of these devices serve to build palpable tension, but the structure also contributes to how deeply disturbing the story becomes. At times, the characters and the emotional core of the events are almost obscured by such quick maneuvering through the weighty plot.
Dark and unsettling, this novel’s end arrives abruptly even as readers are still moving at a breakneck speed.Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5464-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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