In the Blood - Adrian Phoenix

Series: The Maker's Song, Book 2
Genre: Urban Fantasy
352 pages
Published: 2008
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Review:
In the Blood picks up where A Rush of Wings ended. Dante the enigmatic rockstar vampire and Heather the FBI agent had tackled a serial killer and uncovered bits and pieces of Dante's childhood in the previous book.

Dante now knows a lot more about his past, the role of the Government branch and details about this real family (trying not to give away spoilers here) - he's much more than a vampire, and he doesn't yet know what it all entails. He's met up with Heather in Seattle, who has her own problems with her job, family and a cold case that's a touch too personal.
Meanwhile, the government guys are trying to clean up their experiment gone wrong and everyone involved in it - that includes Heather and Dante. Then there's one doctor still left from his childhood experiments who has some tricks up his sleeve to trigger Dante into sociopathic heaven, a pair of crazy twins with their own plan for world domination and an assortment of other psychos to add to the fun that make up the montage of villainous characters.

And that doesn't even include the Bold and the Beautiful drama going on in Gehenna with all the Fallen and their politics and ambition to control Dante.

There really are too many things going on in this book - not to many to confuse you after the first 20-odd pages, but i don't think I've ever read a series that has so many bad guys wanting a piece of the pie - specially when said pie is the guy and not the chick in the book.

Just like the previous book, In the Blood is intense and dark. There isn't much in terms of character development from book 1 and i had a lot of questions that were left unanswered and seem more like plot holes to me than 'coming soon in book 3'. There's a bunch of new characters in this book that will keep you occupied though - Annie, Heathers bipolar sister, her useless father, new set of villains, Dante's band members..they help keep it interesting. My favourite character is still Von, the nomad-turned vampire llygad

This book is definitely more gripping that A Rush of Wings. I read it at one go and couldn't put it down. Mostly because i really wanted to know what would happen next

Verdict: Read this one only if you liked a Rush of Wings and are comfortable with Adrian's writing style and jumble of characters because there's more of that in In the Blood. I liked both books and i look forward to book 3. Beneath the Skin releases December 29th this year.