While the war rages on and the American Vampire Senate
looks to fill its empty seats, Dorina is still part of the squad looking to
track down the smugglers using portals to arm the Dark Mages with deadly weaponry
and creatures to tip the balance of the war
The investigation turns deadly when several vampire
agents are destroyed leaving only Dorina as a survivor with a hole in her
memory. To find out what happened, she will have to deal with vampires, fae,
fallen angels – and more plots than she could ever have imagined.
But while all this is going on Dorina has another battle –
with herself. Old barriers in her mind are coming down and everything she
believed about her dhampire nature is being challenged – presenting new threats
and new possibilities
There is a lot about this book I love
I love the development of what Dorina is, of the very
nature of the dhampires and how this relates to vampire culture. The whole
sense that vampires are deeply social and hierarchical and that Dorina’s
vampire side feels all of that but is then isolated from the hierarchy by
vampiric hatred of dhampires and her human side’s own weakness. It’s a wonderful
little twist and manages to greatly expand what Dorina is without the sense of
retconning or changing the established world setting at all. It also led to
more excellent exploration of Dorina’s character and history as well as vampire
culture. There’s also the ever-complicated relationship between Dorina and her
father which is also wonderfully expanded on and explored in this book.
I also really liked Ray in this book. We had a lot more
of his history as someone who is half-Portuguese and half-Indonesian and his
history of being rather stuck between two cultures (including an interesting
insight that previous Asian vampiric masters had used him, in centuries past,
to be their guide to Europe but missing that European blood doesn’t give
knowledge of language or custom). He really grew as a character in this book
beyond his standard role as somewhat inept comic relief. He’s survivor and a
chancer. A vampire who will never be a major power nor has any real close
family ties to keep him safe - he’s always found his niche by being clever and
being daring. He takes risks, he’s willing to try things no-one else would
consider (sometimes for very good reason) he’s imaginative and creative and
comes up with a lot of crafty answers and work arounds because of it. He
becomes an asset and we can see him as an asset without having to greatly
increase his power.
The plot itself is amazingly complicated (which I have
some problems with which I will get to) which draws on every element of this
vast world – and it is vast. I think every faction and player that has been
introduced in the last two books all plays a hand in this book – the fae, the
vampires, the mages and some new ones we’ve never heard of before. It all adds
up to an incredibly complicated master plan which fits so well in this rich and
wide world that is laid out for us
The pacing of the book is break neck (which, again, is
not without its problems). Dorina runs from action to action, scene to scene at
an incredible rate with no time to catch your breath before the next concept or
battle or revelation lands on you. This doesn’t pause or get bogged down,
though it can certainly exhaust you as you struggle to keep up with the battles
or absorb yet another chunk of world building, all of it thrown at you with
little chance to process.
The main problem I have with this book is that it feels
long. It is somewhat long, that’s certainly true, but it’s the feeling of its
length that is the problem. That sense as you’re reading that this book has
already gone on for a very long time and isn’t it about time it started to get
wrapped up?
