Review: Sins of the Son by Christian Baines

Title: Sins of the Son

Series: The Arcadia Trust: Book Three

Author: Christian Baines

Length: 284 Pages

Category: Urban Fantasy

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: Reality is merely a concept in this installment of the Arcadia Trust series, so much so that I didn’t know if I should believe what Reylan was seeing, or simply sit back and enjoy seeing what he was believing. The sleight of hand is precise, and that ending left me overjoyed I don’t have to wait long for the next book.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Abandoned by his werewolf lover, the only thing Reylan wants is to return to his vampire life of blood and beautiful boys. It’s a solid plan, until his first meal as a single man tries to kill him.

Hoping to free his young would-be assassin from the religious zealots that sent him, Reylan enlists the help of Iain Grieg, a charismatic priest with unsettling knowledge of the night’s secrets.

Surrounded by conflicting agendas and an army fuelled by hate, Reylan fights to secure his future, if he can only trust the mysterious priest and bury the ghosts of the past.

Review: After more than a century as a Blood Shade—call him the V-word at your own peril—why has Reylan suddenly begun dreaming again? Unearthing the answer to that question gradually becomes as imperative as Reylan sparing the life of the boy, Luca, who’d just tried to murder him. And then there’s the man Luca attacked in an alleyway but, to the essential benefit of my WTF? meter, is left very much alive. The question begged in that act is, who the hell is the boy, what is he, and why is he?

Iain merely begs the question, whose side are you on? Trust me when I say the answer to that is as opaque as his motives.

“The things humans will do for blind faith.”

Hypocrisy and the desecration of faith serves as a means to the end for a faction whose mania uses every weapon at their disposal against the Arcadia Trust and the Houses that represent this version of Sydney, Australia. Christian Baines spares not a single one of his readers’ nerves or feelings in Sins of the Son. The question becomes what is real and what isn’t? Or what if it’s all real but, then again . . . not? The heretics and their chaos bring death in the wake of their vengeance. Whose death is or is not permanent held me over the metaphorical ledge as Iain proved reality is mutable and time is a mere mundane concept, leaving Reylan wrong-footed at every turn of events. Losses are still losses in the moment, though, and they hit hard. Whether the wins can be trusted is anyone’s guess, right up to the bitter end.

Does Reylan trust Iain? No. Does he have any choice but to trust him? Also no. Talk about a catch-22, especially when Iain gives Reylan back something he has been aching for, for far too long.

Reality is merely a concept in this installment of the Arcadia Trust series, so much so that I didn’t know if I should believe what Reylan was seeing, or simply sit back and enjoy seeing what he was believing. The sleight of hand is precise, and that ending left me overjoyed I don’t have to wait long for the next book.