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Bloodlust

Michelle Rowen

Published 2011             283 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

For those who feast on blood, Jillian Conrad is a fatal attraction. After being injected with a serum that made her blood both irresistible and deadly to vampires, she was used as a pawn to assassinate the vampire king. Now, the vampires want her eliminated.

Hunted and unable to return to her old life, Jillian desperately seeks to prevent the poison in her veins from killing her. And she must find a way to help her dhampyr protector, Declan, whose exposure to the serum has split his personality into one part uncontrolled desire, and one part stone cold killer.

But an even greater danger is rising. The Amarantos – a secret society of vampires – is seeking the infant daughter of the slain king to complete their quest for true immortality. And if they succeed, no one, living or undead, will escape the darkness…

The Review

Bloodlust is the sequel novel to Nightshade, the first urban fantasy offering from the pen of paranormal romance author Michelle Rowen. On the whole Bloodlust works pretty well by itself as a stand-alone story but with a chain events and characters established in the earlier instalment it’s probably best to read Nightshade first for maximum reading enjoyment.

The Bloodlust storyline opens just a couple of weeks after the events in Nightshade left off. Jill is still ill from being injected with the Nightshade poison and Declan is fighting insane rages caused by a bad reaction to a serum that was supposed to permanently calm his most dangerous dhampyr traits. Rather than spend their time looking for a cure to their ills, they still have to contain a vampire uprising that has the potential to see vampires come out of hiding and enslave humans for their blood.

Central to events is the new-born dhampyr (half vampire, half human) daughter of the deposed vampire king, Matthias. Her blood has the ability to grant true immortality to the vampire who drinks it, making her the target for any vampire who knows of her existence. Jill and Declan are sworn to protect the baby which brings them further into conflict with Kristoff the new king of the vampires – who also happens to be Declan’s father.

The plot twists and turns around who gets control of the vampire throne pulling Jill and Declan into the action along the way. Jill and Declan’s burgeoning relationship has plenty of new obstacles to overcome – not least Declan’s slow slide into dhampyr insanity, spawning violent rages, which make him a physical danger to Jill. This sexy relationship drama is combined with plenty of fast-paced, exciting action which should keep readers engrossed from the start to the story’s finish. There is no shortage of blood and danger in Bloodlust’s dark vampire world which shouldn’t fail to delight vampire fiction fans either.

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