Natasha Mostert: Keeper of Light and Dust

Review by Vicky London

It’s just not very often that I find a book to gush over, much less two and both by the same author. Natasha Mostert is one of the few authors that teaches me something incredibly interesting every time I read one of her books. She completely won me over with her thrilling novel, Season of the Witch in 2007. It was scary, intellectual and flat out fascinating. I’m pretty sure I blabbed to everyone I know about that book and passed out copies to friends. So I was very excited when I found out that Natasha had a new book coming out called Keeper of Light and Dust. To add icing on the cake, I won a copy of it from Marta Acosta over at her blog Vampire Wire.

Here’s the book cover blurb:

Mia Lockheart has a secret. Her mother was a Keeper, as was her grandmother—women who were warriors, healers, and protectors. As Mia practices her craft among the boxers and martial artists of South London, and begins a romance with her childhood friend, the fighter Nick Duffy, she has no idea that a man who calls himself “Dragonfly” is watching from the shadows.

Adrian Ashton is a brilliant scientist, an expert in the breaking field of biophoton emissions from cells within the human body. He is also a skilled martial artist—and a modern-day vampire. With the aid of the enigmatic Book of Life and Death, written in the thirteenth century by the legendary Chinese physician Zhang Sanfeng, he preys on other martial artists and drains them of their chi—the vital energy that flows through the body.

Mia finds herself drawn to his dark genius, but when he targets Nick as his next victim, she is forced to choose between the two men. It becomes a fight to the death in which love is both the greatest weakness and the biggest prize.

The characters in this novel are complex and nuanced. Adrian is a vampire in the purest sense of the word. He is a man who befriends and truly likes the fighters he meets, yet has no problem taking their lives to extend his own. Mia is a tattoo artist and a warrior, although she doesn’t think of herself in that way. She uses the skills passed on to her by her mother to protect the fighters she has taken into her care. Mia immediately recognizes Adrian as a threat but isn’t sure why. His beauty and intelligence attract her but there’s an element she recognizes as wrong about him. They are repelled by, and yet drawn to, each other in a beautiful dance of death and destruction.

Mysticism, science, and technology come together in this thriller that explores what it really means to love and to live forever. Mostert brings her personal knowledge of the martial arts and her experience as a kick boxer to ad realism to the story. Another fascinating bit of Natasha’s bio from her publisher that you might like to know: her interest in the supernatural started in early childhood while growing up in South Africa. Natasha’s nanny was a Zulu woman who introduced her to the work of witch doctors. Those concepts of witchcraft and alchemy later found their way into her novel Season of the Witch. A portion of the proceeds of Keeper of Light and Dust will go towards funding the Cooperation For Peace and Unity’s “Fighting for Peace”. “Fighting for Peace” is an initiative to promote the right of Afghan women through boxing to help them feel empowered and confident in a country where they have been oppressed for decades.

If you’re looking for something a bit different that will engage your mind as well as your heart, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this compelling novel.

Release Date: April 2, 2009
ISBN-10: 0525951008

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