What do you think?
Rate this book
African Immortals #2
The Living Blood
From the author of the national bestseller My Soul to Keep comes a riveting new novel of supernatural suspense -- a gripping tale that brilliantly showcases a writer at the pinnacle of her astounding storytelling abilities.
Jessica Jacobs-Wolde has somehow survived the worst that any mother or wife could ever endure: the deaths of her husband and first daughter. But now, four years later, not only is the nightmare continuing -- it may have only just begun. Jessica has discovered the terrifying truth behind the legacy that her husband left to their second daughter, Fana...a legacy preordained a thousand years before her time and drenched in the powerful lifeblood that now courses through her veins. As young Fana begins to display unearthly abilities that are quickly spiraling out of control, she becomes the target of those who will stop at nothing to exploit her power -- and the unwitting touchstone in an ancient supernatural battle whose outcome may decide the fate of all humanity.
Jessica Jacobs-Wolde has somehow survived the worst that any mother or wife could ever endure: the deaths of her husband and first daughter. But now, four years later, not only is the nightmare continuing -- it may have only just begun. Jessica has discovered the terrifying truth behind the legacy that her husband left to their second daughter, Fana...a legacy preordained a thousand years before her time and drenched in the powerful lifeblood that now courses through her veins. As young Fana begins to display unearthly abilities that are quickly spiraling out of control, she becomes the target of those who will stop at nothing to exploit her power -- and the unwitting touchstone in an ancient supernatural battle whose outcome may decide the fate of all humanity.
532 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2001
211 people are currently reading
3904 people want to read
About the author
Tananarive Due
111 books6,118 followersTANANARIVE DUE (tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo) is the award-winning author of The Wishing Pool & Other Stories and the upcoming The Reformatory ("A masterpiece"--Library Journal). She and her husband, Steven Barnes, co-wrote the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, "Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!"
A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. She and her husband live with their son, Jason.
A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. She and her husband live with their son, Jason.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 254 reviews
May 31, 2022
I really enjoyed The Living Blood and will definitely be continuing the series very soon. The only slight issue I had was believing that such a young child, even one that is magical and potentially a goddess would be as articulate with the ability to reason the way that Fana does. I know that's nit picky since this is fantasy but it is hard for me to embrace that element of the story. However I loved everything else about the way the story is unfolding.
Two of my favorite quotes from The Living Blood: "The opposite of love, Dawitt told himself, was not hatred, as he had always believed; it was only a lack of joy." And the Ethiopian fable that introduced one of the last sections of the book: A hare meeting a lioness one day said reproachfully, "I have always a great number of children, while you have but one or two now and then." The lioness replied, "It is true, but my one child is a lion." Alright, now!
Where you can find me:
•(♥).•*Monica Is Reading*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @monicaisreading
Instagram: @readermonica
Two of my favorite quotes from The Living Blood: "The opposite of love, Dawitt told himself, was not hatred, as he had always believed; it was only a lack of joy." And the Ethiopian fable that introduced one of the last sections of the book: A hare meeting a lioness one day said reproachfully, "I have always a great number of children, while you have but one or two now and then." The lioness replied, "It is true, but my one child is a lion." Alright, now!
Where you can find me:
•(♥).•*Monica Is Reading*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @monicaisreading
Instagram: @readermonica
May 13, 2010
...
...
...
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS GALORE
The Living Blood struck me most forcefully as an exploration of parenting. in the right hands, speculative fiction takes the study of the (interior and exterior, inner and outer) limits of humanity to places where, perhaps, realist fiction cannot go. The Living Blood is not solely about parenting, but the rapport between children and parents, and the idea of childhood, are very much at the center of it.
the first book of the trilogy, My Soul to Keep, ends with the death of jessica and david's daughter kira in truly dramatic circumstances. i expected tananarive due to leave this stunning ending unexplored. i was wrong.
The Living Blood does plenty probing of kira's death and the terrible burden this death puts on the shoulder of the baby sister who was in her mother's womb when the tragedy occurred. if you'll remember, jessica allowed kira to die when she could have saved her, and she did so in a split-second decision, out of a sort of intuition that saving her would rob her of her place in heaven.
maybe The Living Blood could have done more with kira's destiny, her grandfather, the place in heaven he promised her throughout My Soul to Keep, and the reassurances he offered that she would be able to see and visit her parents (and see them happy!) as often as she wanted. in The Living Blood kira does visit her mom, but these visitations are ghostly and disturbing and probably not really happening. kira’s apparitions seem, in fact, to be a trick played on jessica by little fana’s supernatural powers.
TD, however, makes up amply for this omission by delving deeply into jessica’s grief and the ways in which her love for fana cannot but be tinged by it. i found this beautiful, a great feat of psychological lucidity and courage on the part of this author. parents are marked by their history in ways we often discount or deny. children are part of this history, too, and carriers of its seeds. familial history is passed down the generations, enriched each time by new layers of presentness. the existence of this historical chain, the continuance the makes each of us the rich product of an intersection of past and present, seems to me often lost to our idea of childhood. children are born with the guilt of cain and the screams of abel embedded in their small minds. in this way, they are a treasure-trove of familial, generational and cultural inheritance.
at the beginning of the novel we meet jessica again as a mother who loves her living daughter while being haunted by the loss of her dead one. correspondingly, fana is a much loved girl who has to contend with the presence of her sister in her mother's heart. in the course of the novel TD allows jessica to grow out of this crushing grief, but she never quite deprives her of the richness of its memory, and i, for one, am grateful for it.
fana deals with the large presence of her sister by striving with all she has (she is between three and four but she's already incredibly powerful) to soothe her mother’s grief, on the one hand, and have her all to herself, on the other. at some point, she decides that the best way to go about this is by blotting out jessica's memory of kira altogether. this is a compelling scene. jessica does not remember her grief and is therefore happier and relieved; at the same time, she feels, and knows, that she has lost something precious, and begs fana to give it back to her. i like the way TD understands the shaping power of memory and the value of transforming memories instead of erasing them (as if we could ever fill the void they leave). i also like the way in which she portrays the relationship between fana and jessica as a loving/painful/difficult negotiation of roles, and a shared process of loss and gain. in the way all children do but few children are represented as doing, fana experiences searing loss from the moment she is born, in spite of her mother’s excellent parenting.
this is mirrored on a purely human level in the parallel story of lucas and jared, who have lost, respectively, a wife and a mother, and are about to lose each other (jared is terminally sick with leukemia).
the other axis of TD’s deep look at parenting concerns what parents can and cannot do for their children, and the moral dilemmas centered around the curbing of both their own and their children’s fantasies of omnipotence.
in the relationship between jessica and fana, it is fana’s omnipotence that comes to the fore, and jessica’s moral struggle with accepting it, cherishing it, and protecting fana from it, simultaneously. in this way, this novel works as the fictional version of a manual on how to parent exceptional children. TD looks insightfully at the incredible burdens exceptional children carry – the grief that constantly threatens to assail them, the short-lived elations, the crushing responsibility – and presents in jessica a remarkably tuned-in parent. in the first half of the book Jessica spends a lot of time trying to understand fana. eventually the job of understanding her daughter leads her to take the radical and selfless step of leaving everything behind and looking for help in the only place where help can be found. at the same time, and quite heroically, she insists on fana’s humanity and childishness, and fights tooth and nail to protect it. in the bee scene that takes place during the escape from the colony, Jessica chooses to protect fana from excessive responsibility and loss of innocence over the certainty the fana could rescue them all from demise.
in the relationship between lucas and jared it is lucas, the father, who plays with fantasies of omnipotence, and jared who, with the very tangible language of vulnerability and disease, tries his best to remind him of the value of their shared humanity.
both jessica and lucas do eventually fail. this failure is mixed, because it appears in the novel as an apparent success: jared lives, lucas becomes an immortal, and jessica, david, and fana create the community that will ensure fana’s safe flourishing. jessica, though, has abandoned fana when fana needed her most and this has caused fana to provoke a hurricane and experience her tremendous destructive power. she may be "safe" in her new communal family, but she is heavily traumatized and basically catatonic. it is interesting to notice that jessica abandons fana for very good reasons, and it is thanks to this abandonment that jared survives and alex and lucas are saved. still, jessica compromises, and the consequences of this compromise are dire for fana.
likewise, lucas and jared are together, jared is flourishing, lucas is happily re-coupled with alex and is an immortal to boot. but immortality, TD has amply shown us, is at best a mixed blessing. in fact, if there is one thing My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood have shown us, the life of the immortal is ultimately a profoundly diminished life.
it is a sign of TD's depth as an author that she draws very little attention to the failures and successes of her character. in fact, she is a remarkably non-judgmental author. you have to draw your own conclusion pretty much as you would in life. and she complicates things, because that's how they are in real life: messy, and complex, and difficult. so both My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood are very difficult novels to read, not because they don't flow fast and furiously (they do), but because they are constantly balanced on the precarious, evanescent, and imbricate line between good and bad.
...
...
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS GALORE
The Living Blood struck me most forcefully as an exploration of parenting. in the right hands, speculative fiction takes the study of the (interior and exterior, inner and outer) limits of humanity to places where, perhaps, realist fiction cannot go. The Living Blood is not solely about parenting, but the rapport between children and parents, and the idea of childhood, are very much at the center of it.
the first book of the trilogy, My Soul to Keep, ends with the death of jessica and david's daughter kira in truly dramatic circumstances. i expected tananarive due to leave this stunning ending unexplored. i was wrong.
The Living Blood does plenty probing of kira's death and the terrible burden this death puts on the shoulder of the baby sister who was in her mother's womb when the tragedy occurred. if you'll remember, jessica allowed kira to die when she could have saved her, and she did so in a split-second decision, out of a sort of intuition that saving her would rob her of her place in heaven.
maybe The Living Blood could have done more with kira's destiny, her grandfather, the place in heaven he promised her throughout My Soul to Keep, and the reassurances he offered that she would be able to see and visit her parents (and see them happy!) as often as she wanted. in The Living Blood kira does visit her mom, but these visitations are ghostly and disturbing and probably not really happening. kira’s apparitions seem, in fact, to be a trick played on jessica by little fana’s supernatural powers.
TD, however, makes up amply for this omission by delving deeply into jessica’s grief and the ways in which her love for fana cannot but be tinged by it. i found this beautiful, a great feat of psychological lucidity and courage on the part of this author. parents are marked by their history in ways we often discount or deny. children are part of this history, too, and carriers of its seeds. familial history is passed down the generations, enriched each time by new layers of presentness. the existence of this historical chain, the continuance the makes each of us the rich product of an intersection of past and present, seems to me often lost to our idea of childhood. children are born with the guilt of cain and the screams of abel embedded in their small minds. in this way, they are a treasure-trove of familial, generational and cultural inheritance.
at the beginning of the novel we meet jessica again as a mother who loves her living daughter while being haunted by the loss of her dead one. correspondingly, fana is a much loved girl who has to contend with the presence of her sister in her mother's heart. in the course of the novel TD allows jessica to grow out of this crushing grief, but she never quite deprives her of the richness of its memory, and i, for one, am grateful for it.
fana deals with the large presence of her sister by striving with all she has (she is between three and four but she's already incredibly powerful) to soothe her mother’s grief, on the one hand, and have her all to herself, on the other. at some point, she decides that the best way to go about this is by blotting out jessica's memory of kira altogether. this is a compelling scene. jessica does not remember her grief and is therefore happier and relieved; at the same time, she feels, and knows, that she has lost something precious, and begs fana to give it back to her. i like the way TD understands the shaping power of memory and the value of transforming memories instead of erasing them (as if we could ever fill the void they leave). i also like the way in which she portrays the relationship between fana and jessica as a loving/painful/difficult negotiation of roles, and a shared process of loss and gain. in the way all children do but few children are represented as doing, fana experiences searing loss from the moment she is born, in spite of her mother’s excellent parenting.
this is mirrored on a purely human level in the parallel story of lucas and jared, who have lost, respectively, a wife and a mother, and are about to lose each other (jared is terminally sick with leukemia).
the other axis of TD’s deep look at parenting concerns what parents can and cannot do for their children, and the moral dilemmas centered around the curbing of both their own and their children’s fantasies of omnipotence.
in the relationship between jessica and fana, it is fana’s omnipotence that comes to the fore, and jessica’s moral struggle with accepting it, cherishing it, and protecting fana from it, simultaneously. in this way, this novel works as the fictional version of a manual on how to parent exceptional children. TD looks insightfully at the incredible burdens exceptional children carry – the grief that constantly threatens to assail them, the short-lived elations, the crushing responsibility – and presents in jessica a remarkably tuned-in parent. in the first half of the book Jessica spends a lot of time trying to understand fana. eventually the job of understanding her daughter leads her to take the radical and selfless step of leaving everything behind and looking for help in the only place where help can be found. at the same time, and quite heroically, she insists on fana’s humanity and childishness, and fights tooth and nail to protect it. in the bee scene that takes place during the escape from the colony, Jessica chooses to protect fana from excessive responsibility and loss of innocence over the certainty the fana could rescue them all from demise.
in the relationship between lucas and jared it is lucas, the father, who plays with fantasies of omnipotence, and jared who, with the very tangible language of vulnerability and disease, tries his best to remind him of the value of their shared humanity.
both jessica and lucas do eventually fail. this failure is mixed, because it appears in the novel as an apparent success: jared lives, lucas becomes an immortal, and jessica, david, and fana create the community that will ensure fana’s safe flourishing. jessica, though, has abandoned fana when fana needed her most and this has caused fana to provoke a hurricane and experience her tremendous destructive power. she may be "safe" in her new communal family, but she is heavily traumatized and basically catatonic. it is interesting to notice that jessica abandons fana for very good reasons, and it is thanks to this abandonment that jared survives and alex and lucas are saved. still, jessica compromises, and the consequences of this compromise are dire for fana.
likewise, lucas and jared are together, jared is flourishing, lucas is happily re-coupled with alex and is an immortal to boot. but immortality, TD has amply shown us, is at best a mixed blessing. in fact, if there is one thing My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood have shown us, the life of the immortal is ultimately a profoundly diminished life.
it is a sign of TD's depth as an author that she draws very little attention to the failures and successes of her character. in fact, she is a remarkably non-judgmental author. you have to draw your own conclusion pretty much as you would in life. and she complicates things, because that's how they are in real life: messy, and complex, and difficult. so both My Soul to Keep and The Living Blood are very difficult novels to read, not because they don't flow fast and furiously (they do), but because they are constantly balanced on the precarious, evanescent, and imbricate line between good and bad.
August 3, 2023
A fantastic book.
I loved the first book, My Soul to Keep, but this second one was even better. Great exploration of characters and relationships; an exciting story with a fast moving plot; and excellent use of the supernatural dipping into elements of horror.
The Living Blood reminded me of all the things I like about Stephen King, but told in Tananarive Due’s distinctive and unique voice. I’m very surprised that it isn’t more widely read.
I loved the first book, My Soul to Keep, but this second one was even better. Great exploration of characters and relationships; an exciting story with a fast moving plot; and excellent use of the supernatural dipping into elements of horror.
The Living Blood reminded me of all the things I like about Stephen King, but told in Tananarive Due’s distinctive and unique voice. I’m very surprised that it isn’t more widely read.
August 26, 2018
Wow this was SO much better than I remembered. I read this when it was released, if memory serves.
This really surpasses the first book.
This really surpasses the first book.
June 14, 2008
Go to the following links with a quickness if you enjoy paranormal scifi and vampire series. If you enjoy reading Octavia Butler,( i.e. Kindred) you'll def. like these two authors.
http://www.tananarivedue.com/
http://www.vampire-huntress.com/lesli...
These two authors use these genres to pull characters from across diverse backgrounds and time periods to deal with age old questions (i.e. what would you do if you had immortality or the gifts to heal, how much free will and choice do we really have based on societal structures) as well as blending in historical and religious concepts. They also set there scenes in places like Ethiopia, Salvador, Australia... and incorporate cultural themes and landmarks associated with the people of color of those regions.
http://www.tananarivedue.com/
http://www.vampire-huntress.com/lesli...
These two authors use these genres to pull characters from across diverse backgrounds and time periods to deal with age old questions (i.e. what would you do if you had immortality or the gifts to heal, how much free will and choice do we really have based on societal structures) as well as blending in historical and religious concepts. They also set there scenes in places like Ethiopia, Salvador, Australia... and incorporate cultural themes and landmarks associated with the people of color of those regions.
November 23, 2021
I find myself so angry with the two main characters, Jessica and David to be exact. I don’t know if I would ever forgive David if I was Jessica, no matter if I had living blood or not. My heart went out to Fauna. She didn’t deserve what happened to her and I can understand the fear that she had towards the end of the book.
I found it kind of circle of life while reading this book. Although hundreds of years went by, the human lives the immortals touched was felt for generations to come. I am curious to know what will happen to Fauna.
I found it kind of circle of life while reading this book. Although hundreds of years went by, the human lives the immortals touched was felt for generations to come. I am curious to know what will happen to Fauna.
December 5, 2011
This is the only book that I have read where part 2 was better than part one. The first book of this series is My Soul to Keep and it was a great read, but this one had me on the tip of my seat from the first page. I reread this book often and always find myself intrigued and discovering something that I didn't see in my previous read.
It's a definite book shelf main stay.
It's a definite book shelf main stay.
October 1, 2025
This is the most “here, damn” 4 star rating I’ve ever given in my life. Know that. But I will NAWT be continuing this series. I’d sooner do crack.
February 20, 2017
I really am loving this series. But now that this one is done, my goodness what else can happen in the next two books, like I can hardly wait to read them.
Being the second book in the series I can't go into much details, but what I can say is that this book was, to me, way better than the 1st and I loved the first one, so that's saying a lot. I read this one really fast, because here were moments where you just couldn't put the book down. Btw Jessica, Fans, David, and Alex there was no way I could stop reading at some points. And with new people like Lucas (who gave me a fright) and Teferi. It was just amazing.
*FEB 20th Update*
I realize I had to give this five stars. It was just too good, it built on the previous book so well. 5 Stars.
Being the second book in the series I can't go into much details, but what I can say is that this book was, to me, way better than the 1st and I loved the first one, so that's saying a lot. I read this one really fast, because here were moments where you just couldn't put the book down. Btw Jessica, Fans, David, and Alex there was no way I could stop reading at some points. And with new people like Lucas (who gave me a fright) and Teferi. It was just amazing.
*FEB 20th Update*
I realize I had to give this five stars. It was just too good, it built on the previous book so well. 5 Stars.
October 5, 2022
Another wonderful novel in the African Immortals series, by the author Due. I enjoyed this novel as much as I did the first one. If you are interested in this series at all, please read them in order, with the first novel first.
The audiobook version of this novel is Narrated by Peter Francis James, as was the first book in this series.
4 stars, and recommended.
The audiobook version of this novel is Narrated by Peter Francis James, as was the first book in this series.
4 stars, and recommended.
August 1, 2017
Tananarive Due's second novel in the African Immortals series stands head and shoulders above the first part, My Soul to Keep (which I liked quite a lot, by the way). The author really ratchets up the suspense as she skillfully weaves together several plot lines that all come together in the climax. Fana, the daughter of Immortal David Wolde and mortal human Jessica Jacobs-Wolde, is first person to actually be born with the Living Blood and she demonstrates powers and abilities that even David's Life Brothers struggle to comprehend when Jessica seeks them out in their colony in Ethiopia. But these powers have made her the target of the Shadows, dark forces that only she can perceive in her dreams and trances, forces which seek to control her and use her powers for evil ends. Can she learn to control her powers so she can thwart them? Meanwhile, other humans have heard about the Blood's healing properties and are searching for them. Desperate doctor Lucas Shepard hopes for a miracle cure for his young son's untreatable leukemia. More ominous are the mercenaries dispatched by a medical-company executive, who will stop at nothing to gain immortality and the billion-dollar profits that a drug based on the living blood would bring. All this comes together in the climax set in Florida during a record-breaking hurricane conjured up by Fana herself in the course of her struggles with the Shadows. The Living Blood is truly an intense page-turner you won't be able to put down! I only hope that the next novels in the series can measure up to this one.
September 13, 2012
the only qualm i have with this expertly written story is on page 495 when did the cancer center in tallahassee get a 904 area code? i don't recall jarod being moved to mayo or wolfson's children hospital...other than that i am pleased. still glad i read this book last instead of first. i was curious about the back story of dawit, the lawyer, the alexis' marriage, khaludun,and the things that happened in botswana. those bees. the baby singing stormy weather. hurricane beatrice. cupcakes. talk about a very merry unbirthday tea party with the mad hatter and his friends! that was really awesome!!! probably more so because i am familiar with the teenage and young adult versions of fana. it would be nice to know what happens next. maybe skip a generation after the great cleansing. i appreciate downplaying of the "agony of christ." the story is actually a story. not some preachy concoction meant to fuel protestant guilt. i am grateful for that. the foundation for my soul to keep and my soul to take are solid. i'm talking about 7.5 earthquake proof. read this book and everything else tananarive due writes and/or endorses. buy her work. put it on the bookshelf next to octavia butler and nalo hopkinson. you can thank me later.
July 25, 2019
Excellent as always from this author, now to the next one in the series.
February 10, 2021
I’m in love with this series. This book flew by! Over five hundred pages long, and I could barley put it down. I can’t wait to read book three now.
March 22, 2024
Audiobook (27 hours) narrated by Peter Francis James
The narration is abysmal. If I had options of another narrator, I would have taken it. If I could sit down and read the print version, I would have done that.
The first few chapters there is faint breathing, long pauses, and watery swallowing (like swallowing a mouth full of spit). It's faint but loud enough to hear.
There's a slight hum for the first 5 chapters that isn't that noticeable, until there is a long pause and the sound wraps into chapter 6 where the audio becomes crystal clear.
We continue on with the smacking and swallowing with a clear background until chapter 25, when all of a sudden the audio becomes louder and the background static sound returns.
Watery swallowing intensifies.
Towards the end of chapter 34 we are entertained with a fan or an ac blowing up against the mic for a good bit of time. The mic is obviously covered, so we are not getting a wind tunnel effect, but the sound is obvious. It does not, however, drown out the gross swallowing.
In Chapter 36 we have a long pause mid sentence, and it sounds like a cough drop, mint or other hard candy hitting the back of the teeth, before we commence with the reading. Along with the swallowing we have occasional mouth noises that includes what sounds like hard candy rattling against the back of the teeth, like he is moving it around in his mouth, really enjoying it. By this I mean that he is really enjoying it, I am not.
While I feel that the book is best listened too at 2.15x speed or below, I pop it up to 3x speed to get through it as I really love the book but the watery swallowing grosses me out and I just cannot listen to this for 27 hours.
Also, after the book ends, we go back to chapter 59, then chapter 60. These are repeat chapters, I'm not sure why they are there and they at least start off identical, with all of the humming and mouth noises, so I didn't completely listen through again to see if there was anything different. I think they just messed up and dropped these chapters twice, for funs.
The audiobook is horrible. This is the same narrator as in the first book of the series, which was not great, but this one is worse. Go for the print version.
I did check audible reviews for other books narrated by him and saw that others complained of spit swallowing, water drinking, mint sucking, but it doesn't seem to bother everyone. I wear headphones to listen, so the sound is going straight into my ear holes.
This is a four book series. I looked ahead and Blood Colony is narrated by Patricia Floyd, while My Soul to Take is narrated by Lizan Mitchell. Fingers crossed that the narration is better. I looked at audible ratings and there are a couple of complaints about name pronunciations and pacing, so I guess we will found out.
I am thoroughly disappointed of how negatively the narration and audio has effected my enjoyment.
The Living Blood is the second book of the African Immortals quadrilogy.
Tananarive Due does a fantastic job with the continued world building and character development and creation as we move continents, meet new people, challenges and learn the consequences of actions and inaction's.
There are a lot of moving parts.
The horror intensifies and veins out. Tananarive Due is a master at layering the scary parts:
The layers of several types of fear coming from various sources, both real and imagined as well as beyond reality, creates an anxious intensity that the characters are living in, reacting too, running from and towards, trying to solve or resolve or deal with it in some type of way. We see fears play off each other, characters trying to calm others or work themselves up. This is Due's wheelhouse. She lays it all out in a maze of fear and horror.
As the reader, we cheer and root for some to get through while also horrifically feeling satisfaction of the destruction of others. Everyone is effected by something.
27 hours.
What could go wrong?
What could go right?
Do yourself a favor and pick up the print version of this book, set aside some time and dive in.
Recommend.
The narration is abysmal. If I had options of another narrator, I would have taken it. If I could sit down and read the print version, I would have done that.
The first few chapters there is faint breathing, long pauses, and watery swallowing (like swallowing a mouth full of spit). It's faint but loud enough to hear.
There's a slight hum for the first 5 chapters that isn't that noticeable, until there is a long pause and the sound wraps into chapter 6 where the audio becomes crystal clear.
We continue on with the smacking and swallowing with a clear background until chapter 25, when all of a sudden the audio becomes louder and the background static sound returns.
Watery swallowing intensifies.
Towards the end of chapter 34 we are entertained with a fan or an ac blowing up against the mic for a good bit of time. The mic is obviously covered, so we are not getting a wind tunnel effect, but the sound is obvious. It does not, however, drown out the gross swallowing.
In Chapter 36 we have a long pause mid sentence, and it sounds like a cough drop, mint or other hard candy hitting the back of the teeth, before we commence with the reading. Along with the swallowing we have occasional mouth noises that includes what sounds like hard candy rattling against the back of the teeth, like he is moving it around in his mouth, really enjoying it. By this I mean that he is really enjoying it, I am not.
While I feel that the book is best listened too at 2.15x speed or below, I pop it up to 3x speed to get through it as I really love the book but the watery swallowing grosses me out and I just cannot listen to this for 27 hours.
Also, after the book ends, we go back to chapter 59, then chapter 60. These are repeat chapters, I'm not sure why they are there and they at least start off identical, with all of the humming and mouth noises, so I didn't completely listen through again to see if there was anything different. I think they just messed up and dropped these chapters twice, for funs.
The audiobook is horrible. This is the same narrator as in the first book of the series, which was not great, but this one is worse. Go for the print version.
I did check audible reviews for other books narrated by him and saw that others complained of spit swallowing, water drinking, mint sucking, but it doesn't seem to bother everyone. I wear headphones to listen, so the sound is going straight into my ear holes.
This is a four book series. I looked ahead and Blood Colony is narrated by Patricia Floyd, while My Soul to Take is narrated by Lizan Mitchell. Fingers crossed that the narration is better. I looked at audible ratings and there are a couple of complaints about name pronunciations and pacing, so I guess we will found out.
I am thoroughly disappointed of how negatively the narration and audio has effected my enjoyment.
The Living Blood is the second book of the African Immortals quadrilogy.
Tananarive Due does a fantastic job with the continued world building and character development and creation as we move continents, meet new people, challenges and learn the consequences of actions and inaction's.
There are a lot of moving parts.
The horror intensifies and veins out. Tananarive Due is a master at layering the scary parts:
The layers of several types of fear coming from various sources, both real and imagined as well as beyond reality, creates an anxious intensity that the characters are living in, reacting too, running from and towards, trying to solve or resolve or deal with it in some type of way. We see fears play off each other, characters trying to calm others or work themselves up. This is Due's wheelhouse. She lays it all out in a maze of fear and horror.
As the reader, we cheer and root for some to get through while also horrifically feeling satisfaction of the destruction of others. Everyone is effected by something.
27 hours.
What could go wrong?
What could go right?
Do yourself a favor and pick up the print version of this book, set aside some time and dive in.
Recommend.
July 11, 2009
I love books and movies that have a unique perspective. This book is one of the great ones.
In brief, we learn that the blood of Christ flows through the veins of a select group of his Disciples. Their joy and curse is that because of this gift, they have eternal life as promised by the teachings of Christ. The issue is their eternal life is here on earth rather than in an afterlife. The book shares what happens when one of the Disciples breaks one of the laws associated with carrying Christ's gift.
The fast pace, the blending of historical references, human nature and spiritual "facts" makes this an incredible read. I believe Mrs. Due is a truly gifted writer. She brings the characters to life so vividly that you forget you are reading a work of fiction!
The Living Blood is one of my top recommendations for friends interested in reading Christian Fiction. If you like suspense, you will love this book.
Carefree Toni
In brief, we learn that the blood of Christ flows through the veins of a select group of his Disciples. Their joy and curse is that because of this gift, they have eternal life as promised by the teachings of Christ. The issue is their eternal life is here on earth rather than in an afterlife. The book shares what happens when one of the Disciples breaks one of the laws associated with carrying Christ's gift.
The fast pace, the blending of historical references, human nature and spiritual "facts" makes this an incredible read. I believe Mrs. Due is a truly gifted writer. She brings the characters to life so vividly that you forget you are reading a work of fiction!
The Living Blood is one of my top recommendations for friends interested in reading Christian Fiction. If you like suspense, you will love this book.
Carefree Toni
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 17, 2010
I had a hard time giving this 4 stars..some passages were clearly 4 star worthy but other portions were a distinct turn off. I think the over extended passages of the father Lucas's torture and his sons struggle with leukemia were overwraught and unnecessarily long. I wish she could have gotten more into the historical-mystical aspects of her story and less into the set up of her next novel in the series. I did enjoy her preposition that the "living blood" was an alterative history to the Cruxcifiction and wish she had explored it further. But some passages transported me to a different place and time as the best science fiction does. Its a little long and sometimes padded but she is a talented writer and its a pretty unforgetable book.
April 14, 2020
ReedIII Quick Review: Book 2 of the African Immortals picks up right after book 1 (My Soul to Keep) and should be read in order. An excellent continuation and expansion of the original book. Continues exploring “what would you do with or for the secret of immortality?”
Read
June 20, 2025The fourth Tananarive Due book I've read, and another excellent one. it's the sequel to her novel My Soul to Keep. Like that one, it concerns a group of immortals, whose longevity stems from their blood.
In the first book that was buried in an excellent domestic horror thriller, and here both the story and the mythology are expanded out. After the harrowing events of the first novel, some of the characters have a clinic in Africa where their blood is seen as a miracle drug (which it is).
There are parallel stories. Fana, the daughter of two of the immortals is coming into her power alarmingly early and her mother (a newly minted immortal) has to go find the original colony to help her daughter. An American father's son is dying of leukemia and learns about the clinic. A shadowy businessman hires mercenaries and uses his family to try to profit off the blood.
It's a lot to keep spinning, but Due keeps the tension relentless as the novel escalates to its conclusion.
I still like The Good House and The Reformatory more, but this is excellent. Due deserves her reputation as one of the best horror writers going. I intend to read the rest of her books eventually.
In the first book that was buried in an excellent domestic horror thriller, and here both the story and the mythology are expanded out. After the harrowing events of the first novel, some of the characters have a clinic in Africa where their blood is seen as a miracle drug (which it is).
There are parallel stories. Fana, the daughter of two of the immortals is coming into her power alarmingly early and her mother (a newly minted immortal) has to go find the original colony to help her daughter. An American father's son is dying of leukemia and learns about the clinic. A shadowy businessman hires mercenaries and uses his family to try to profit off the blood.
It's a lot to keep spinning, but Due keeps the tension relentless as the novel escalates to its conclusion.
I still like The Good House and The Reformatory more, but this is excellent. Due deserves her reputation as one of the best horror writers going. I intend to read the rest of her books eventually.
March 19, 2025
I’d say closer to 3.5, not as good as the first in the series but I did enjoy hearing the rest of the story, it was a 26-hour audiobook so LONG which I think impacted my lower rating too
July 8, 2021
3.5 stars. I liked the first book of this series fine but it was definitely a lot of setup. Here we finally start to get to the good stuff. This absolutely has the feel of an epic series in a lot of ways, even though the subject is so different than what you normally see in this kind of series. It has the feel of a long King novel (I said this of THE GOOD HOUSE, too, it's definitely Due's vibe) and I suspect a lot of King readers would enjoy Due.
At first I thought this was going to be pretty simple but it ends up being nicely complex. Also at first I thought I was going to be annoyed by the fact that a major character is a preschool-aged girl with magic powers, but once I just let Due go it worked for me just fine. We really get to dive in with more depth to the idea of the immortals, the ethical dilemmas, which is what I was hoping the first book would do more often. And we're setting things up for the series to move forward in a very different way, so honestly, this does basically everything you could ask for book 2 of a series.
Technically I have this as Horror but honestly it's more of a Fantasy series. The thing that most impresses me about it is how Due writes a book with supernatural elements where the characters are devoutly religious Christians and where there's no real conflict between their belief and the supernatural elements. It's so rare to see religious characters in fiction whose religion is just an element of their character baked in like anything else, and it's lovely to see Due treat it so well.
At first I thought this was going to be pretty simple but it ends up being nicely complex. Also at first I thought I was going to be annoyed by the fact that a major character is a preschool-aged girl with magic powers, but once I just let Due go it worked for me just fine. We really get to dive in with more depth to the idea of the immortals, the ethical dilemmas, which is what I was hoping the first book would do more often. And we're setting things up for the series to move forward in a very different way, so honestly, this does basically everything you could ask for book 2 of a series.
Technically I have this as Horror but honestly it's more of a Fantasy series. The thing that most impresses me about it is how Due writes a book with supernatural elements where the characters are devoutly religious Christians and where there's no real conflict between their belief and the supernatural elements. It's so rare to see religious characters in fiction whose religion is just an element of their character baked in like anything else, and it's lovely to see Due treat it so well.
January 5, 2012
i was looking forward to a thought-provoking page-turner and was pretty disappointed. too much attention to plot, not enough interrogation of the potentially very provocative content of the book (religion/cults/goodness/evil/death/immortality/humanness/godliness/the unconscious/etc). also a novel about an american family giving out healing blood in south africa (and later botswana), even on the DL, with only the slightest nod to the problem of HIV/AIDS in these countries is insulting. also really God-y and heteronormative.
in short, nowhere near as good as Octavia Butler's Fledgling.
still, it was engrossing and i read the whole thing.
in short, nowhere near as good as Octavia Butler's Fledgling.
still, it was engrossing and i read the whole thing.
March 4, 2016
This book started out slower than My Soul to Keep, but it's plot was much more complex and ultimately, a more satisfying read. People keep comparing Due to Octavia Butler, and while I understand that Due is also a female, African American writer of science fiction, I think her work stands on its own!
August 10, 2011
Difficult for me to review, I didn't realize this is not the first book of a series. So I came in a little late but it didn't take away from the book.
The Living Blood heals or under right circumstances brings immortality. I was afraid it would be a horror story but I don't think it fits, I believe it to be more Fantasy. Overall it was enjoyable if you like something off the beaten path and out there a little bit.
I am now curious about more of this authors' work.
The Living Blood heals or under right circumstances brings immortality. I was afraid it would be a horror story but I don't think it fits, I believe it to be more Fantasy. Overall it was enjoyable if you like something off the beaten path and out there a little bit.
I am now curious about more of this authors' work.
January 26, 2012
I truly enjoyed the 2nd book of the 'African Immortals' series by Tananarive Due. I suspect that this would be a good story for the big screen at some point.
I think this is the 3rd or 4th book by Due that I've read and I've enjoyed each one of them. I'm not much of a 'horror' fan ... and her books cut very close to the edge.
Anyhow, I do recommend this book to y'all ... of course you should read the first book in the series before you read this one!
I think this is the 3rd or 4th book by Due that I've read and I've enjoyed each one of them. I'm not much of a 'horror' fan ... and her books cut very close to the edge.
Anyhow, I do recommend this book to y'all ... of course you should read the first book in the series before you read this one!
March 14, 2010
Man, I just crawled into this book and camped out a few days. Can't wait to read the third book. I was so captivated by this that I am convinced there should be a movie trilogy to go along with the books.
November 8, 2010
this is as good as the first in the series MY SOUL TO KEEP in most respects, slightly less as tightly written; again, new and familiar characters of depth and interest, a good combination of multiple plotlines that connect well; the dialogue is refreshing and rich......highly reccomended.
November 28, 2011
The Living Blood is one of my favorite books. I began it apprehensively because I don't typically enjoy science fiction, save Octavia Butler's Kindred, but this is so much more, like Kindred, than science fiction. It's a complex story of love, relationships and the meaning of mortality.
May 24, 2016
WOW, had no idea that such a talented, amazing black female fantasy author existed (besides Octavia)! Truly enjoyed this book, but some POVs were not that interesting to me. But overall, I have to say this is a favorite for me.
July 24, 2024
I loved the book. I'm sure this book will stay with me long after. The growth and strength of Jessica and her sister Alexis strength and dedication, their unwavering faith was inspiring.
I'm not sure if I am completely satisfied with the ending. No spoilers but why was Lucas and Jared an integral part of the story? What was their connection to Jessica and Fana. There was one statement given but when the book is 515 pages I think you can say more than one sentence. There is a statement made about two characters future decision regarding the living blood and they said "They would probably do it.. maybe later down the road." It felt out of place/context given the gravity of the decision. While reading it I was curious about it and wanted it addressed. The two books does a great job illustrating the sacrifices and the struggles of immortals why make that statement so casually especially given the strong religious background of the family. Previous book: when given the option a character choose death due to religious reasons. The decisions felt tolled over and heavy. I didn't like the dismissive way they addressed it at the end of book 2.
Even still I have to give Ms. Due her flowers. Bravo!
I'm not sure if I am completely satisfied with the ending. No spoilers but why was Lucas and Jared an integral part of the story? What was their connection to Jessica and Fana. There was one statement given but when the book is 515 pages I think you can say more than one sentence. There is a statement made about two characters future decision regarding the living blood and they said "They would probably do it.. maybe later down the road." It felt out of place/context given the gravity of the decision. While reading it I was curious about it and wanted it addressed. The two books does a great job illustrating the sacrifices and the struggles of immortals why make that statement so casually especially given the strong religious background of the family. Previous book: when given the option a character choose death due to religious reasons. The decisions felt tolled over and heavy. I didn't like the dismissive way they addressed it at the end of book 2.
Even still I have to give Ms. Due her flowers. Bravo!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 254 reviews