Daughter of Darkness by Steven Spruill

Retail Price: $6.99
B&N Price: $5.59
Format: Paperback, 336pp.
ISBN: 0312970811
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, Inc.
Pub. Date: August 1999

Synopsis:
Dr. Jenn Hrluska is young, beautiful, and everyone's choice for best intern at Washington, D.C.'s Adams Memorial hospital. When she finds the freshly killed body of a stranger on her doorstep, her initial shock turns to an irresistible thirst for the blood surrounding the body, for Jenn is a hemophage: her life depends on feeding on the blood of "normals." Until now, Jenn has survived by transfusing blood from sleeping victims, harmlessly. With bone-chilling certainty, she recognizes that this body has been left as an invitation to reclaim her destiny of taking blood by deadly force. And only one person would have left the body for her - her father, Zane. Beginning with cruel pranks to remind her of his powers, Zane soon commits a murder that brings Jenn to the brink of exposure - or death. Unjustly imprisoned for murder, and facing the possibility of dying without a supply of fresh blood, Jenn decides she must escape and use her unearthly powers to defeat Zane once and for all.

Reviews and Commentary

From Publisher's Weekly - Publishers Weekly:
The alloy of medical thriller and vampire chiller that Spruill forged in Rulers of Darkness (1995) proves not only strong but durable as this sequel reprises its predecessor's dramatic conflicts. Ten years have passed since detective Merrick Chapman buried his son, Zane, alive in a concrete vault to stop the murder sprees that threatened to disclose the family's curse of hemophagic leukemia, Spruill's clever medical term for vampirism. Zane's daughter Jenn, now a highly regarded intern at a D.C. hospital who's in a happy relationship with novelist Hugh McCall, controls her own vampirism by harmlessly siphoning blood from sleeping people. Suddenly, however, a series of pranks clearly intended to arouse her bloodlust reveals that Zane has escaped and is determined to use her as a pawn against her grandfather. With skill and subtlety, Spruill orchestrates several suspenseful challenges that force Jenn to walk the tightrope between divulging her true nature to unsuspecting human associates or throwing in her lot with her father. His credible rendering of supernatural beings as members of a dysfunctional family with conflicting ideas about how to manage their problems shows a delightfully oddball sense of topicality, yet he is never less than sympathetic and balanced in his portrayal. Despite several stray subplots and an ending that leaves the door open for further adventures for its hemophage heavies, this novel is that rare example of a sequel as memorable as its predecessor. (June)

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This is the sequel to Spruill's Rulers of Darkness which I have not read, and now do not feel as if I need to. So much of the plot of the first book was included to make sense of this one that I already know what happens and why. I ennjoyed reading about Jenn and her adventure, she is a believeable character, despite the mess of her prison escape. This bit was used to bring the book to its climax and push the story along, but was rather forced and b-movie-esque. While it is rather slow in the beginning, I think it was neccessary to make the transition between what her life was and what it becomes. The prose is attractive. The characters well developed. A few plot problems, which were more annoying than distractive, but nothing that causes enough of a problem to knock the reader out of the story wondering about it. I read it in one sitting - but don't take that as Gospel - I read THE STAND in one sitting too. :/

VVV - While not the absolute TOP of the genre, this title is worth the price of admission.

-- Marrah --