Title: Bloodline
Series: The Memoirs of a Vampire: Book One
Author: Joel Abernathy
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: Short Novel
Category: Dark Fantasy
Rating: 4 Stars
At a Glance: Briskly paced and darkly alluring, author Joel Abernathy delivers an intimate story of monsters and men that I couldn’t put down.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Fate made me an immortal. The thirst made me a monster.
But I never truly lost my soul until I lost him.
Enoch. My missing half. The only creature whose depravity could rival my own. He stole this wicked curse from my veins and left me broken in his quest for the power I swore I would never pass on to another.
I hate him. I love him. And I’m doomed to live the rest of my days apart from my wretched child, knowing every bit of chaos he brings into this world is my doing.
If I kill Enoch, I condemn us both.
If I let him live, I condemn the world.
I do not know whether this is my last confession, or the most blasphemous love story ever told, but either way, this account is the truth.
The memoirs of a vampire are not for the faint of heart, but I do not tell my story to commemorate a life well lived. I tell it because the beginning of my story is what marks the end of everything.
Review: Joel Abernathy commenced to pouring himself into this book when he sat down to write it, as if he became this tormented character during the process, knew him intimately, and then translated that intimacy so effectively that I felt the emotion of every word the author put to the page of this dark fantasy. The story begins in the 6th Century, at the moment Marcellus becomes a vampire, and then spans a broad swath of time, eventually landing him in the year 2040, following a horrific event that resulted in him missing two hundred years and awakening to a world vastly different from the one he’d left behind, only to fall into the cruel hands of a man who leads an army and will use Marcellus, regardless of the immense harm it causes him, as a means to an end.
Abernathy accomplishes the various time leaps throughout the story sparely while not at all sacrificing his readers’ ability to remain connected to Marcellus and what we might call the human events he experiences while not strictly being human himself: the lovers he loses, the promises he makes, the betrayals he endures, the agony of being made a pawn for other’s purposes. What happens to Marcellus builds the picture of a character who not only shows readers how unique he is among his kind but also gives evidence that the only time he has any sort of agency over his own life is when he is entirely alone. When he becomes entangled with others—whether by choice or by circumstance—he suffers at their hands, begging the question, which is more monstrous, the “monster” or the humans who see him as both the beauty and the beast.
Marcellus as Sire is given some weight in this story; of most significance is his relationship—or lack thereof—with his only surviving progeny, a man named Enoch who has left an indelible imprint on what we know as the human world. Enoch has been biding his time, centuries, in fact, waiting for the opportune moment to reconnect with his maker. What will happen once they again come face-to-face remains to be seen in book two, though, so be aware that there is no completion to the story in Bloodline. It’s not a cliffhanger in the strictest sense but rather an effective bit of bait to hook readers for Descendent, the continuation of Marcellus’s and Enoch’s story.
I’ve read a handful of Joel Abernathy’s books now, and have enjoyed all of them. That streak appears to be continuing with his Memoirs of a Vampire.
You can buy Bloodline here:
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