Sanctum

I tried to make several allowances for the 1st book: tiring days, lots of exciting things happening outside, slightly sadistic tour guides... you name it. But then, when I took up the 2nd book, I found myself smack dab in the middle of crazy overtime at work, which led to an awful amount of stress. And when I'm stressed I need to bury myself in guilty-pleasure. Sanctum unfortunately has nothing in the way of feel-good-stories.

I mainly slogged through several horrific, yet strangely sensual, werewolf transformation sequences on Eric's part. (What can I say? I'm a sick sick person...) Then had not one, but TWO, separate enemy cults get in his way. But at least, he got to do his fighting in really picturesque scenery like: snowy Croatia, show more windy Rome, and winter-fairy-tale Gévaudan (present day Lozere).

As far as Jean Chastel's part of the story is concerned, it took the reader through a considerably more intricate adventure. However given the lengthy discussion, as well as inner monologue of some of the characters made me suspect that the author had decided to relate this story in real time... which took up about 3 years or so.

Then again, the beginning of the Sisterhood of Jesus' Blood, and the seraphim did make for interesting action sequences. Sadly most of these scenes wouldn't lead anywhere.

And yet, inspite of the decent amount of badass-ery, I still couldn't empathise with any of the characters. In the end, I was just holding out for a satisfying finale, something to connect things with the vampire series, but that didn't happen either.

Score: 2.4/5 stars

This was a deeply unsatisfying story. Hopefully, the next book in the series will make it worth the effort...

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review of book 1: Ritus

Eric is also present in other books from the Dunkle Spannung series:
review of book 5: Judassohn
review of book 6: Judastöchter (less) show less

...In short, Sanctum is not the improvement I had hoped for. If you like fast and action packed this book might still entertain but for me the plot itself showed so many holes that I couldn't really get into the story. I guess it is a classic werewolf tale of local legend intertwined with a bit of conspiracy theory. This story works, it gets written over and over. In this case the execution leaves something to be desired though. I am sure there are a lot better werewolf stories out there than the one I just read.

Full Random Comments review

"Gott braucht einen Dämon, um den Teufel aufzuspüren." Rom, Ewige Stadt, Hort uralter Geheimnisse. Hierhin führen im Jahre 2004 die Spuren einer Verschwörung, in deren Mittelpunkt Eric von Kastell steht, der Werwolfjäger. Immer wieder trifft er auf das Vermächtnis einer Frau, die im 18. Jahrhundert um ihr Leben kämpfte: Gregoria, die Äbtissin eines entweihten Klosters. Eric und Gregoria sind untrennbar verbunden durch die heiligste Substanz, die sich auf Erden findet: Das Sanctum kann Wunder wirken - oder den Tod bringen...

Über den Autor
Markus Heitz, geboren 1971, studierte Germanistik und Geschichte und lebt als freier Autor in Zweibrücken. Sein aufsehenerregender Erstling Schatten über Ulldart, der Auftakt zum show more sechsbändigen Epos Ulldart - Die Dunkle Zeit, wurde mit dem Deutschen Phantastik Preis 2003 als "Bestes Roman-Debüt National" ausgezeichnet. Markus Heitz gehört heute zu den erfolgreichsten deutschen Fantasy-Autoren. show less