Bloodline

Having spent a month in a hospital suffering from a wild case of trench fever, Jack Shaw awakens to find the cause of his nightmares - one Captain Quincey Harker - is now living in his home with his beloved sister, Lily. Jack, feeling insecure, turns to the one who was by his side during his illness, Mary Seward, for help. Together they find that Quincey Harker is not the British gentlemen that he claims to be, but something more... something much, much more.

I was given Bloodline (Kate Cary) by a friend who said "You're a Dracula fan... Read this!" And sadly, I did. The story as mentioned above is of the tale of Jack and Lily Shaw, and Mary Seward as they embark on a journey through a nightmare that they thought didn't exist.

Jack first meets Quincey in the trenches of World War I, where he is a communications officer for the front. He meets his commanding officer, Quincey, and is awed by his love of war, and his savage courage. Mysterious things happen while on the front: sound waves of German soldiers reporting a strange killing of their men - leaving the bodies drained of blood, and Quincey himself going on night raids... alone. Jack knows there is something wrong when he himself joins Harker on one of the raids. Jack is attacked with mustard gas, and is carried away by Harker, and taken from France to England where he is stationed at Perfleet Sanatorium - once a mental institution, now a hospital. There Mary Seward is volunteering to help the wounded, and recognizes him from a party they both attended five years earlier. Jack comes carrying a journal, which Mary takes and reads, learning all about Jack's horrible nightmares. Determined to help, she stays by his side until he comes out of his madness and is able to go home.

While Jack is ill, Mary meets his sister, Lily Shaw. She and Lily become great friends, and it is in Mary that Lily confides that she has invited Captain Quincey Harker to stay at her home at Carfax Hall as a token of gratitude for saving her brother from certain death. Mary objects to this, but there is no stopping Harker. Once here, he captures the heart of innocent Lily and persuades her to marry him in Romania where he was born. Jack and Mary catching word of this, rush to Mary's father, Jack Seward.

Once Mary's father hears of the stories Jack has to tell about the war and of Quincey Harker, he comes to the one conclusion he hoped he would never have to make: Quincey is a vampire, and the son of Lord Tepes and Mina Harker. Now Jack and Mary must race to Romania before Lily is wedded to Harker and thus chains her to her fate of being a creature of the night forever.

As exciting as this book may sound, it's not. The book itself is told through the effect of journals, which is pointless since it may as well be told by the characters themselves. The only chapters that have a feel of journalism to them would be Lily's letters to her parents, other wise it's annoying. The story line is interesting, but for a fanatic of Dracula as I myself am, it's infuriating. Never have I been so annoyed by a book until this came a long. The book is a waste of a good read and, even though well written, a very anti-climatic let down.

The book gets an obvious 2/5 from me, because well, I hated it. It would be good for people who like Bram Stoker's Dracula and want to know what happens after the characters defeat him, but it wouldn't be as exciting as the namesake of its plot.