Quick Synopsis – For centuries, vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night. The survivors fled to their own specie’s safe haven. Our story starts in Lightfall, the vampire safe haven. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and a vampire maid, Sam, finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords. Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin, and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.

Song This Reminds Me Of – Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine

Publication Date – Jan. 14, 2024

Content Notes – There is a lot of blood and gore in this book. There is also a fair amount of homophobia, sexism, classism, and misogyny. There is an off-page suicide mention and an on-page suicide attempt.

Rating – ⭐⭐⭐out of 5 stars

Review – This book is a multi-POV fantasy novel where humans are presumed to not exist, and the world is ruled by vampires, werewolves, and sorcerers. How are sorcerers not human, you ask? Well, because apparently, they aren’t born but emerge as fully grown adults from a pod. Fun. The vampires in this world are also unique. They actually prefer animal blood because they can take on the attributes of the animal. It’s one of the ways vampires keep strict classes in place. Lower classes (the Worn) can only receive cow’s blood and are kept docile and weak. Higher classes can receive all kinds of animal blood; some of it is even magicked.

The author took a lot of work in world-building, and it definitely shines through. The issue I had was that sometimes, as the reader, I felt too bogged down by the details. For example, the vampires have a blood market that serves as a stock market. The author goes to lengths to explain how a stock market works, which isn’t really necessary for the characters in the conversation or for the furthering of the story. I think I would have preferred more information on how either the werewolf or mage societies work.

The murder mystery that serves as the central plot is very Sherlock to me. There is a lot of running around and making deductions. Sage, one of our non-magical sorcerers, essentially serves as Sherlock. In fact, before leading his own cult (a cult that believes humans did exist and are maybe coming back), Sage was an investigator. There were so many interesting little plot pieces, and my favorite was that humans “don’t exist”; they are the myths in this world of fantastical creatures. Some even believe that the Grays are humankind come to reclaim the land.

One of the other issues I had with this book is how regressive vampire society was. These are beings that have lived for centuries and somehow think women are still less than and same-sex partners are frowned upon. It just felt kind of stale to me that there would be no progress.

This was a little bit of a slow read for me, but I think if you like politically leaning fantasy novels like Jade City, you would enjoy this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own.