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THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN
by Sarah Jane Stratford
St Martin's Minotaur, October 2009
304 pages
$24.99
ISBN: 0312560133


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Chick-lit's new gory cousin, Vampire Romance, has another addition with Sarah Jane Stratford's THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN. Mercifully, this newcomer is elegantly written and satisfyingly filled with both gore and depth of character. Like other contemporary writers in the genre, Stratford has humanized her vampires, making them the heroes as opposed to the villains of this period novel.

Part vampire romance, part WWII spy thriller, the story centres on Brigit, a millennial vampire, more than one thousand years old and other millennials as they attempt to destabilize the Nazi rise to power. A strange setting for a vamp book perhaps, but surprisingly interesting as it manages to simultaneously tackle issues of race, religion and gender.

The main character's back story follows Brigit through her vampire birth in Viking times to her falling in love with a beautiful Jewish baker, Eamon (nee Jacob), in the middle ages till she arrives in Europe on the brink of the Nazi invasion. Perhaps the weakness of the narrative lies in its mildly irritating timeline. It jumps from 1939, to 1940, to somewhere around 1000 AD and back to the middle ages. I suppose when one lives 1500 years, it's hard to be constrained by a linear timeline.

The motivation for why the vampires attempt to end the war before it began is also a bit muddy, but it makes for some pretty amazing scenes of Nazi death and gore reminiscent of Tarrentino's recent film, Inglourious Basterds. Where the book excels is in its characters and their search for what it means to be human and undead. These vampires are romantics in the most fundamental sense of the word. This book undertakes to explore themes of love and passion, hatred and remorse, and loss and longing. Stratford pulls no punches in her descriptions of the horrors perpetrated by both humans and vampires.

As well, I was impressed by her ability to establish the various historical periods. She manages to evoke a sense of the time without falling victim to some historical novelists' need to "tour guide" their way though an era. This was a good palate cleanser after my last vampire novel run-in, Dacre Stokers' recent Dracula debacle.

All in all, THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN is an interesting read, with somewhat more depth than the present slew of vampire chronicles. This is Stratford's first attempt at an historical novel and it bodes well for the future.

Reviewed by Philippa Klein, November 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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