Review by Vicky London
American Blood by Gregory Holden has a unique premise. Calida Villena is a vampire who was born in 101 A.D. in the Valencia province of Spain. She is also the first vampire and has been captured by the federal government to track kill public enemy number one.
Here’s the book cover blurb:
She was born human, became a leper, and while a mining slave of the Roman Empire she touched a strange stone that transformed her into the world’s first vampire. That was over nineteen hundred years ago and the American government is tracking her.
Here is the story of an administration during its eighth and final year in office looking for a way to salvage its legacy by finding and killing the world’s most wanted terrorist. For seven years America has failed to accomplish this mission and now, desperate and beset by scandal, the government hatches a covert plan to capture, and then coerce, the world’s first vampire into locating and killing the Sheikh.
The government’s lead researcher, a competent molecular biologist, begins to uncover the secrets of this remarkable and deadly creature. But as his research moves forward he discovers that instead of finding a remorseless killer driven to feed on humankind, the female vampire is a being who desires companionship and love.
It is when they are sent to the Pashtun Belt on the mission to find and assassinate the Sheikh that the researcher and the vampire, facing death, make the ultimate sacrifice for each other.
The really scary thing about this book is not the vampire but the government employees who attempt to control her. Knowing that people actually exist in government administration like the director is more bone chilling than a person who drinks blood to survive. I enjoyed the plot of this book including the scientific explanation of Calida’s vampirism which was fascinating. While interesting, the science also slowed down the pace of the action. The portion of the book that took place in Afghanistan seemed very realistic. I found it to be compelling and really enjoyed what Calida decided to do to help out the women of a particular Pashtun tribe. I wasn’t completely convinced though of the end of the action in Afghanistan and would have liked a more detailed explanation. In the end everyone gets what they deserve and it’s definitely not what they planned on. If you’re looking for a vampire story a bit out of the norm and enjoy political intrigue then you will definitely like American Blood.
Publisher: Orion’s Belt Press; Trade Paperback edition
Release Date: September 8, 2009
ISBN-10: 0615320147
Popularity: 4% [?]
Reader Ratings - Click On A Star to Rate This Book:
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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