My ARC Review:

Not just any vampire read, this is about Dracula…. of course this has been done in many different ways throughout the years, and to be honest it took me a while to get into it, as at first it just seems like a retelling of the story, but give it chance and the story changes and becomes something else!!

I’m a big vampire and Dracula fan, and this book started like the Bram Stoker Dracula film, so close in fact I could just picture the film as I was reading it. But as you read further the book and tone changes as you get the author’s idea for this new world of Immortals of the Damned she is creating. The background to the series is being laid down and the origins are being told.

It starts with Vlad’s beginnings, him and his brother Radu given over to the Turks as children in exchange for them not to invade Romania, over the years Radu becomes the King’s favourite and is kept whilst Vlad is release back to his homeland and in turn becomes King. Vlad meets the love of his life, Elizabeth, they marry and she gets pregnant. Vlad goes to war with the Turks as he refuses to give any more of Romania’s children over to them. Vlad returns to find his wife has been murdered and he then becomes Dracula. I enjoyed this part in the book a lot, the actual recounting of what happened and how he became what he did.

We then move on to the 1800’s in London, the Bram Stoker part of the story unfurls, where many of the characters are the same – Mina, Van Helsing, Lucy, Jonathan Harker. Whilst in London Vlad visits the Hellfire Club, where the likes of Dorian Gray, Dr. Frankenstein and the likes hang out also, further books within this series fodder here!

The story moves on through the years until the present is reached, all the while Vlad is searching for his true love, which seems never to have waned throughout the centuries.

This is not a romantic retelling of Dracula – Vlad in this at first seems lost to his love for his murdered wife and his intent of finding her again in another lifetime, but you will see over the course of the book how evil he really is. It is violent and gory, there are hot sexy scenes of course, but there is a lot of blood!

I’m looking forward to more books in this series.