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Vampire Trilogy Series #1
Vampire Dawn
Children of the night...beware In the darkness of an abandoned building in Portrush, well beyond the reach of the sun, two vampires have made their home. Claire and Xavier have risen from their underground slumber to feast upon all the new millennium has to offer. But the twenty-first century is not all they had hoped for and there seems to be a shortage of vampires. But they can rectify that. Christian Warke has been searching for almost twenty years for the creature that killed his wife and destroyed his life. Driven by vengeance and fuelled by whiskey, he will not rest until he drives a stake into the heart of the creature called Xavier. Their paths are about to cross. During the next seven days mysteries will be solved, allies will be made, battles will be fought and blood will be spilled under the light of a new dawn. Sometimes, death is just the beginning.
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First published July 21, 2006
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August 4, 2011This is a cracking little book ... read it out of curiosity (it being based in Portrush, Northern Ireland), and honestly wasn't expecting much, but I'll be buying the next in the series once I've got through my current backlog. Well written, great characters, perfectly paced ... this is definitely one for the 'keepers' pile.
December 22, 2023
Xavier and Claire have been vampires for over a hundred years but recently, they have been experiencing physical pains and mental issues that has stopped them from enjoying who and what they are. Believing that they need to release more evil in a desperate attempt to 'fix' themselves, they decide to start siring new vampires. Claire turns a nursing home resident, giving youth and strength to his ailing body, unaware that he is a disturbed rapist and killer who is determined to start a vampire army. With vampire hunters closing in, Xavier and Claire may not be able to stay alive long enough to discover what is wrong with them.
The characters are interesting in this book. I liked Claire, who has stopped feeding as she no longer enjoys killing people and is feeling too much empathy for her victims. Xavier loves her and is reluctantly admitting that he has been covering up his own issues and lack of enjoyment. Claire has a misguided idea that there are fewer dedicated hunters doing extreme good, causing less extreme evil to exist in the form of vampires being softer, throwing things out of balance. By creating more vampires, Xavier hopes to redress the balance and cure himself and Claire. A strange idea but I guess desperate measures are his only hope at that stage.
Claire makes the mistake when she picks out a victim to turn. An evil rapist killer has been released from prison to die in a care home. Claire thinks youth is wasted on the ungrateful young so decides to grant immortal life to someone at the end of his, giving him a new start. She has no idea what he is, and that she has just unleashed a very dangerous creature on the population. Kaaliz, as the new vampire calls himself, has no issue with continuing his reign of rape and murder and now has many new skills to use against his human victims. He is, as the reader would imagine, a total scumbag that you want to see staked right away.
Kaaliz is not the only character I didn't like-and I mean this in a 'I love the way the character is written but I hate his guts' kind of way! Christian is a vampire hunter, an angry, bitter man who lost his wife in a vampire attack just after giving birth, and has dedicated his life to finding and killing Xavier. This should make him a sympathetic character but he is horrible! Rude, nasty, a hopeless alcoholic, his desire for revenge sees him treat everyone like crap and he is prepared to risk the lives of innocent people to get that revenge. It makes him every bit as dangerous as the vampires he is hunting, with perhaps less of a conscience.
There is also a vampire hunter called Lynda. I won't spoil the details of her back story but she is also seeking to find and kill Xavier. I very much liked her story and the twist that it gives to the plot. There is also Audrey the book store owner, who finds herself dragged into the mess after a chance encounter with Christian. Why she even considers helping this guy with the way he treats her is totally beyond me. There are other strong female characters like Quinn, the police officer, who doesn't like Christian, Tryx, a prostitute who is given the chance of a better life after meeting Claire and Xavier by chance, and the hapless Chloe, who stumbles into vampire slaying against her will and finds herself in a ton of trouble.
The characters are all well written and the author takes the time to give them each a back story without boring you with huge info bombs. He doesn't have you just blindly rooting for the hunters and hating all the vampires. They all have good depth and there is a grey area in each character over who is really good and bad. Nobody is perfect here and I was rooting for certain characters on both sides as the plot developed.
It was also a nice thing to finally see a decent horror book that was set in Northern Ireland, without portraying all the locals as bloody idiots. The book is set in the seaside location of Portrush and I very much liked seeing the police working along with vampire hunters to try and save the local people, instead of getting in the way and thinking everyone was delusional. I also liked a few of the plot twists concerning Lynda and Christian, but you need to read the book to find out more as I'm not putting in spoilers.
It's not an all action special but there is tension around several incidents in this character driven book. I was able to read this book in one day so it's not one of these huge books that takes forever to get through. I accidently read book 2 years ago, thinking it was a standalone book, but I didn't review it at the time so I can go back to it without remembering much of the plot. I'll continue with the whole trilogy.
The characters are interesting in this book. I liked Claire, who has stopped feeding as she no longer enjoys killing people and is feeling too much empathy for her victims. Xavier loves her and is reluctantly admitting that he has been covering up his own issues and lack of enjoyment. Claire has a misguided idea that there are fewer dedicated hunters doing extreme good, causing less extreme evil to exist in the form of vampires being softer, throwing things out of balance. By creating more vampires, Xavier hopes to redress the balance and cure himself and Claire. A strange idea but I guess desperate measures are his only hope at that stage.
Claire makes the mistake when she picks out a victim to turn. An evil rapist killer has been released from prison to die in a care home. Claire thinks youth is wasted on the ungrateful young so decides to grant immortal life to someone at the end of his, giving him a new start. She has no idea what he is, and that she has just unleashed a very dangerous creature on the population. Kaaliz, as the new vampire calls himself, has no issue with continuing his reign of rape and murder and now has many new skills to use against his human victims. He is, as the reader would imagine, a total scumbag that you want to see staked right away.
Kaaliz is not the only character I didn't like-and I mean this in a 'I love the way the character is written but I hate his guts' kind of way! Christian is a vampire hunter, an angry, bitter man who lost his wife in a vampire attack just after giving birth, and has dedicated his life to finding and killing Xavier. This should make him a sympathetic character but he is horrible! Rude, nasty, a hopeless alcoholic, his desire for revenge sees him treat everyone like crap and he is prepared to risk the lives of innocent people to get that revenge. It makes him every bit as dangerous as the vampires he is hunting, with perhaps less of a conscience.
There is also a vampire hunter called Lynda. I won't spoil the details of her back story but she is also seeking to find and kill Xavier. I very much liked her story and the twist that it gives to the plot. There is also Audrey the book store owner, who finds herself dragged into the mess after a chance encounter with Christian. Why she even considers helping this guy with the way he treats her is totally beyond me. There are other strong female characters like Quinn, the police officer, who doesn't like Christian, Tryx, a prostitute who is given the chance of a better life after meeting Claire and Xavier by chance, and the hapless Chloe, who stumbles into vampire slaying against her will and finds herself in a ton of trouble.
The characters are all well written and the author takes the time to give them each a back story without boring you with huge info bombs. He doesn't have you just blindly rooting for the hunters and hating all the vampires. They all have good depth and there is a grey area in each character over who is really good and bad. Nobody is perfect here and I was rooting for certain characters on both sides as the plot developed.
It was also a nice thing to finally see a decent horror book that was set in Northern Ireland, without portraying all the locals as bloody idiots. The book is set in the seaside location of Portrush and I very much liked seeing the police working along with vampire hunters to try and save the local people, instead of getting in the way and thinking everyone was delusional. I also liked a few of the plot twists concerning Lynda and Christian, but you need to read the book to find out more as I'm not putting in spoilers.
It's not an all action special but there is tension around several incidents in this character driven book. I was able to read this book in one day so it's not one of these huge books that takes forever to get through. I accidently read book 2 years ago, thinking it was a standalone book, but I didn't review it at the time so I can go back to it without remembering much of the plot. I'll continue with the whole trilogy.
January 30, 2020
This has been on my to read pile for AGESSSS. Wish I'd read it when I first got these books because I know I'd really have enjoyed it back in the day, but unfortunately it is just not my type of story/style anymore.
I do like the length and pacing of the story
And the writing is nice easy language and is quite light hearted and doesn't take itself toooo seriously. Is a bit of fun if you like vampires and something a little bit different to the over serious, gothic, dramatic storylines that are a bit cliche. I think I didn't gel so well with the humour, seems a bit out dated, but I liked the main vampire characters a lot, and the end is a twist.
I do like the length and pacing of the story
And the writing is nice easy language and is quite light hearted and doesn't take itself toooo seriously. Is a bit of fun if you like vampires and something a little bit different to the over serious, gothic, dramatic storylines that are a bit cliche. I think I didn't gel so well with the humour, seems a bit out dated, but I liked the main vampire characters a lot, and the end is a twist.
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