I tried to cut back as much as possible, but I was so in love with the imagery through words in The Greyfriar that I had such a hard time choosing what to include and what to leave out. My apologies in advance for the sheer amount of quotes I'm saddling you with this time. Swashbuckling Adventure! Political Intrigue! Forbidden Desire!

His numb heart broke at that realization.

Soon he would have to reveal himself to her, and he knew what her reaction would be. A 6 star out of 5 (yup, I just wrote 6 out of 5).

It ended.ĭefinitely my favorite book of 2010. I forgot to write about what I did not like about the book…. Ok, so I am going to stop now since as the top line states… I am rambling. I cannot really explain the vampires since one of the rewards of reading the story is learning about the vampires as Adele does. It would be easy to say they are vile, horrific, simplistic creatures that either destroyed or imprisoned most of the humans in the “Great Killing” of 1870 but that would be far from the truth.

The vampires- These vampires are not your typical vampires.

Nearly all the glass windows in the city were smashed, except amazingly, some of the stained glass of….” The turgid river Thames was at low tide and, as the airship skimmed over it, Adele saw white femurs and rib cages protruding from the muck along the shoreline. The city’s wide circles and narrow courtyards were heaped with bones. A closer examination revealed that the mounds were piles of dead bodies. “Adele saw dark mounds scattered on the avenues, streets, and alleys. The best I can do is give you an example.

The imagery- holy cow can the authors write (can you tell I cant!).

The combining of genres- The book combines horror, romance, action, adventure, politics, war, steampunk, and satire with such ease that you don’t even realize you are reading a book outside your comfort zone because it blends so perfectly.

The characters are so well written, I was never confused. In addition to Adele, you have (and this is just a few of them) Greyfriar (but who is he really?), Clark- the American War Hero (again- who is he really?), Colonel Anhalt (I loved him- he is so sweet), Lord Kelvin (I think he will be big in book 2), Mamoru (such an interesting character), Selkirk, Simon and one of my favorite characters Flay.

You have Princess Adele, the main character of the story. These are not your superficial I’ll-put-you-in-to-take-up-pages characters but characters with meaning and a story behind each one.

The characters- The book is full of them.

Therefore, I am going to do a funky bullet point list of what I loved about this book and what I did not like. You are going to have many reviews for this book that will do an awesome job of detailing what the book is about and they will do a much better job of explaining the story. Update- Book 2 is The Rift Walker (Vampire Empire, #2), it will come out in September 2011, Yeah!!!

Vampire empire the greyfriar