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BLOOD OATH
by Christopher Farnsworth
Hodder & Stoughton, July 2010
390 pages
12.99 GBP
ISBN: 0340998148


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

If I'd been asked a week ago whether I ever wanted to read another vampire novel again, the answer would almost certainly have been no, but Christopher Farnsworth has managed to make me rethink that view. The blurb on the back of the book was interesting enough to tempt me into picking it up for a longer look, and the first few pages didn't disappoint. The book gets off to an intriguing start at a secret handover in Kosovo of an unknown object. The meeting quickly turns violent, and succeeded in hooking me from the start, which makes a very pleasant surprise.

The action then moves back to the USA. Ambitious Zach Burrows, a political high-flyer who has put a bit of a dint in his career aspirations with an ill-advised fling with the president's daughter, gets given a new job. One that he definitely does not want, the post of political liaison with America's best kept secret, the president's personal vampire: Nathaniel Cade, bound to generations of US presidents by a blood oath given to President Andrew Johnson in 1867.

It's Cade's job to deal with the monsters, and he's good at it because he's one of them, whether he likes it or not. On this occasion he's up against the creations of Dr Konrad, put together from body parts stolen from the corpses of American soldiers in the Middle East and shipped back to the US to be reassembled into horrific killing machines, ones which know no pain and are virtually unstoppable.

I was drawn to the characters of both Zach and Cade almost immediately. Zach is cocky and inexperienced but, surprisingly, un-irritating. Cade is well drawn, despite the fact that he is laconic to the point of being monosyllabic at times, but the flashes of humour and residual humanity that surface from time to time are well worth waiting for.

The book does contain some stock elements that I could have happily lived without. Cade sleeps in a coffin, which always strikes me as ludicrous and unnecessary, but more reasonably in terms of the plot his strength and regenerative powers are seriously weakened during daylight hours and strong sunlight will kill him. Holy water will cause him severe pain, as does the cross he stubbornly wears and he has a dislike of profanity. But he's fine with garlic and has no trouble crossing thresholds unasked. Farnsworth is selective about which bits of folklore, old and new, he uses, and he does a good job of providing background without info-dumping in a series of chapter headers written as though they are taken from confidential reports.

The final action scenes, with the White House under siege, are some of the best I've read for a while: tense, fast-moving, with amusing uses of improvised weapons. Farnsworth also does an excellent job of reminding the reader that the terrorist's creations were all human once. He also managed to make me care about the minor characters caught up in the death and destruction at the end, raising them all above the level of people introduced just to be killed off.

This book very definitely comes under the heading of a rattling good read. I was drawn in quickly and had very little desire to put it down. It's nice to be proved wrong on this occasion. In THE hands of Christopher Farnsworth, vampire novels definitely still have life left in them, even if their main characters haven't. It looks to me like the book is set up for a sequel, and if it comes, I'll definitely be in the queue for a copy.

§ Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.

Reviewed by Linda Wilson, June 2010

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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