It will perhaps not be a surprise to my readers that vampires are close to my heart. I have enjoyed exploring various adaptations of vampiric lore in fiction, from traditional Victorian vampires, many flavors of immortal zombies and liches to futuristic cyberpunk vampires (and yes, the sparkly ones too). One thing that has been a constant among all of them is the bloodlust. I would have considered that to be so fundamental to the very premise of being a vampire that I wouldn’t have imagined someone would come up with vampiric fiction where bloodlust has no role to play. Well, someone has!
So what happens when you take away the bloodlust and all the rage and passion around that from a vampire? You get something closer to warrior elves, as we have seen in Witcher etc. They happen to be surrounded by myths & misconceptions of being blood-drinkers and plague-drivers, which aren’t quite true in reality. Or perhaps there is some kernel of truth behind the myths, and we will discover more in future books. Either way, it’s an interesting take, if albeit unorthodox. I can make peace with that. Let’s move on.
We explore the story from the perspective of two individuals who are Turned - half human, half vampires - results of esoteric experiments (again reminiscent of Witcher). Bail is your typical morally grey protagonist, someone who has survived in the bleak, dark world through a long chain of well-calculated risks and is ruthless when it comes to the blade. Salem Vesca, our bottled fury FMC, enters the story a bit later, but by the end of the first book, I found her a lot more impressive.
There were few people in the world who cared enough to know him by name, and none of them had good reasons for knowing it.
The Turned are loathed by both sides and have to survive by carving out odd jobs for themselves. Smuggling is a natural fit, and it had been Bail’s choice of career until one fine day he is made an offer that can potentially change his life. As we might expect, the offer comes with an assignment that involves some serious risk-taking, a ton of good old-fashioned butchering, and some interesting but not unpredictable complications.
Who better to do the king’s dirty work than a group of the most reviled people in all the world?
I loved the action scenes - those were the biggest highlights for me. The author doesn’t hold back, and the depictions are vivid and brutal.
Manners might be free, but that also made them worthless.
I also loved the characters, especially Vesca. Her shifting perspective was wonderfully depicted. I also enjoyed how the chemistry between the two evolved, and I am looking forward to seeing what the future holds for the two of them. I was also hoping to get a glimpse of the priests of resurrection, and perhaps a bit of the King’s backstory, neither of which we get in the first book. But the resurrection tangent served as a fantastic hook for what is to come.
Vesca frowned at her reflection, and her reflection frowned back at her.
The descriptions and recollections sometimes overstay their welcome, and I would have enjoyed the story more if it moved at a faster pace. The initial part also has quite a bit of info-dumps which I felt could have just been straight up eliminated because all of that information we anyway get later. However, after the initial 25% the story flows much better, the dialogues drastically improve, and the characters get more interesting.
Vesca stared at the burning building, breathing hard. Mesmerised by the lashing flames.
I appreciate some level of handholding in speculative fiction, especially because I often read books in small chunks over commutes, lunch breaks etc. but in this case I found myself frequently skimming over repetitive delivery of content that was just mentioned a page or two back.
Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed the core story and premise. The style of presentation worked very well for the genre, and I loved the bits of subtle humor woven in places. Not enough to be comedic, just enough to add a bit of color to the bleak ambiance.
Careful, Turned…I might have a sense of humour, but nobody likes a clown.
I’d love to dive deeper into Steve’s world in the future iterations. Besides vampires, revenge too is a theme very close to my cold, black heart. Fingers crossed.
We might be monsters, but we deserve more than what we’ve had.