John H. Steele

I picked up this book to see what happened next, after the strange finish to David Niall Wilson's "The Grail's Covenant" trilogy. The two series were meant to connect together, one taking place in the Dark Ages and the other picking up in the late 20th century. Unfortunately, the connection between the two turned out to be weakly contrived, haphazard, very forced, and lacking in any sense of meaning or depth. In fact, any hope of an intriguing connection between the two was immediately show more destroyed at the beginning of the first book of Fleming's trilogy, in an infuriatingly pointless destructive act of what appeared to be a consummate literary clod.

From this initiating travesty of writing, the entire first book -- having shat all over everything that was good in Wilson's prequel trilogy -- dove face-first into tepidly written, weakly plotted "professional fanfic" targeting the roleplaying game market with pointlessly commercialized banality and unremarkable characterizations devoid of reasons to give a crap whether they lived or died, with the possible exception of just wanting them to die because of what Fleming did with the implicit promise left by Wilson's clearly superior work. show less

As the continuation of the Clan Novel series from White Wolf, this book focuses on the Venture clan as the Sabbat war in the cities up and down the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. This book focuses on Baltimore and its population of undead.

Not being a huge fan of the vampire role playing games that White Wolf produces, I may have gone into reading this book with a jaded mind. There is a focus on politics, on personal advancement at the expense of others, that feeds itself through out show more the book. Part of the plot focuses on one vampire trying to take control. Not my enjoyment, either in my regular life or my reading life. I did know the clans and terms that the author used, so it helped me follow the book better than someone who picked it up without any of the game system background.

From a writer's standpoint, the author does well to attempt to stay within a point of view per chapter. He fails on several ocassions, where we wil get the thoughts or mental ramblings of another in the middle of the chapter POV character's ramblings. Also with the writing, the author seemed to go for a more high brow style, to reflect the opinions of the vampires that it tracked. I might have agreed with the choices, had he reduced the high brow language for the other chapters not following the snooty vampires.

Overall, if you are a fan of the Old world of darkness, I can recommend it. Otherwise not. show less

Despite the setting, which was fantastic, the characters were too wooden and unapproachable and the plot just seems to plod on without any real investment from the reader.

Just an okay read for me. I got bored at some parts though the story picked up a bit later on. Interesting to learn about Assamites, but would have been better if I was more familiar with the mythos of Vampire: the Masquerade.