Barbara Hambly

On this re-read, I will just add this to my overall summary under the first book: as the trilogy enters the closing laps, the characters are put through the ringer even more, with more political shenanigans, treachery, hopeless endeavours, and backs to the wall. If I was reading this fresh now, I might have taken off a star from vols 2 and 3, because there are some aspects, such as the over sentimental portrayal of Queen Minalde/Alde, and the occasional bit of head-hopping between characters within a scene, that I find slightly irritating, but staying true to my original perception and in view of this still being very enjoyable, I am sticking with the original 5 star rating for each volume.… (more)

In this 6th volume of the series, Lydia Asher is in Paris at the hospital bedside of her husband James who is a coma following a fall from a church tower - except that to her and her vampire friend, Don Simon Ysidro, to whom she turns for help, he bears the marks of a vampire attack. The story then follows her attempts with Simon's help to find out what James was doing in Paris and why he has been attacked, while he lies too ill to move and various enemies close in along with the German guns, WWI having broken out. The story is fairly convoluted following the twin machinations of Germans who want to use vampires as a weapon of war, the attempts by various groups to locate a fabled vampire artefact, and the threat by hostile vampires to finish off James. Meanwhile James is having dreams in which he is an onlooker on events in Simon's life in 17th century Paris which have a bearing on the current crisis.

I think this book would have worked much better if it had been a spinoff from the series and dealt with Simon's life in the past from his point of view rather than James Asher's. He is by far the most interesting character in this series and it becomes a bit tiresome to have the reiterated dilema of the Ashers spelled out - that vampires are evil, that James has now turned to hunting them, and that they should kill Simon but depend on him too much for protection against other vampires. If Simon's interactions in the 17th century with other vampires and the church officials who were manipulating him by holding out hope of his salvation, and his conflict between that and his strong friendship with the then vampire Master of Paris, plus his relationship with his human servant Tim who, like the church, wants him to kill 'heretic' vampires, had been the focus of the story instead of appearing as tantalising snippets I think it would have been absorbing. As it is, to some extent this book goes over well trodden old ground and I find the Ashers increasingly irritating and irrelevant, so for me this was only a 3 star read and I won't be bothering with any more of this series. A pity after the absorbing first two volumes, but too many of them since then have been following a formula and falling flat by failing to deliver on promising beginnings.… (more)