July 9, 2012
Simultaneous hardcover and (through Pocket Books) mass market release will bestow neither collectible value nor broad appeal on this uninspired work from the estate of the late bestseller Andrews (1923–1986). Vampire’s daughter Lorelei Patio (introduced in Daughter of Darkness) has rebelled against her family legacy, which requires her and her sisters to provide her father with young male victims. She flees with her first love and then strikes out on her own for tiny Quincy, Mass., “a perfect place in which to get lost.” Lorelei strives to make a mundane life for herself and not draw unwanted attention from her family, the Renegades (vampire-hunting monsters), or the humans she dwells among. She becomes integrated into the community, developing relationships and finding a new suitor, but her remade life is threatened by her past. Readers who fondly remember Andrews’s dramatic gothic novels will be dismayed by this tale’s overwrought prose and underdeveloped plot.