Overview
Combine a Boston P.I., the Vatican, and vampires, and what do you have? A novel-and a series-that will appeal to fans of Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, and Dan Brown.
A brilliant new vampire novel by a Bram Stoker Award-winner. P.I. Peter Octavian is drawn into a search for a stolen book--the handbook of a secret sect of the Catholic Church used as a tool to purge vampires from the Earth. And he'll do almost anything to find it--because Peter is also a vampire. Original.
Synopsis
Book One in the Shadow Saga is a brilliant epic that takes you into the secret world of vampires--and a secret society sworn to destroy them. Sweeping, sensuous, and shocking, it is a powerful vision of immortality that will hold you in its spell...forever.
Library Journal
In this present-day vampire novel, the vampires, or ``Defiant Ones,'' are being hunted by an ancient Vatican group trained in sorcery who carry out their extermination with sadistic pleasure. Peter Octavian is a Defiant One who has sworn off the ``blood song,'' drinking only hospital discards. For his belief that humans are not cattle, he has been ostracized by his own vampire family, but when he sees the pattern of vampire deaths he tries to gather his erstwhile fellows into a resistance movement. As the Vatican cabal begins its sorcerous attack, most of the Defiant Ones join Octavian in fighting off demons and banshees in a huge clash amid Venice's yearly carnival. The Defiant Ones win the battle, and the novel ends with the beginning of a new era in which vampires and humans will try to coexist in peace. Unfortunately, with the exception of Octavian and a few of his friends (e.g., a charmingly feisty undead Buffalo Bill Cody), the vampires are as unappealing a group of sadists as the cabal. Reasonably entertaining for vampire fans, but perhaps too big a story for one volume; the author might have done better with a continuing series.-A.M.B. Amantia, Population Action International, Washington, D.C.