Emberly and Jackson are still desperately struggling to
find some answer to the Red Vampire Plague. Unfortunately, the notes that may
have the cure are nowhere to be found and many factions are gathering around to
use them, threaten them or worse
And her big secret is out – far too many people know she’s
a phoenix, and have magic to counter her fire.
I love the whole concept of the phoenixes in this series.
I love their fire, how their immortality is presented, the awareness of their
age and their require companionship. I like the tragedy of them which their
cursed romantic existence brings – because it isn’t overwrought and ridiculous
I even like the relationship between Emberly and Jackson. I like how neither side expects it to last forever between them (though I rather think we are moving towards monogamy despite everyone saying it’s not in Jackson’s nature and Emberly has already had a her one true love) and that isn’t a great source of angst. I also like how they have their priorities in order – yes they like each other. Yes they want to have sex. A lot. No they’re not doing it now, they’re tired. No they’re not doing it now, they’re busy. No they’re not doing it now, they have other things to do
It seems ridiculous to praise this – but this is a genre
where I have repeatedly seen characters put everything on hold, everything
paused because they simply have to hump right now. Books where characters will
pause mid-escape to have sex, where they will literally stop in front of their
enemies and argue over their relationship.
The relationship is good. The world building is
excellent. The general pacing of the story is excellent, in terms of actual
writing if not focus. I generally find her an intriguing character
I do have some frustrations. Firstly, I spent a lot of
the book wondering exactly what the hell was happening, what they were doing
and why. It could be that it has just been a very long time since I read the
last books or it could be because there’s just sooooo many players involved.
And this doesn’t get better now we’ve introduced another vampire faction and
the werewolves
Which means we now have:
1) The Werewolves
2) The wererats
3) PIT (the police kinda)
4) Syndicati Vampires
5) New Vampire blokey
6) Angry former members of a vampire faction
7) The hive mind plague-end-of-the-world-scary vampires
That’s a lot of focus. So many factions. So many people
to juggle. So many distractions. We get lost and a lot of this doesn’t seem
relevant.
And there’s a reason why I’ve put The Red Vampires at
number 7. It’s not necessarily related to how much attention they pay so much
as how much attention it feels like they pay considering the overwhelming
threat it represents (and this doesn’t just apply to Emberley and Jackson – I
mean the vampires, werewolves et al as well). The red vampires are quite
literally being held up as an utter threat to the country, if not the entire
world. So… why isn’t everyone focused on this? Oh, sure they’re all looking for
these long lost notes for cure – but they’re treating these notes like a spell
or the Maltese Falcon or something. Is no-one doing independent research? What
about finding head Red Vampire and putting a bullet in his head? Honestly if he
didn’t chase them around and regularly launch attacks there’s a decent chance
I’d forget about them all together. This is a terrible way to treat your big
bad, especially when you get to the end of the book and we have the super, epic
ending with so much damage – and that damage is justified because we have a
whole end of the world spectre there – so we needed to keep that in mind and we
didn’t.
While I like most of the magic system etc I have
developed a major pet hate. Fire. Fire is a major part of the powers of the
Phoenix. We know how fire works. It burns things. It doesn’t throw people
around. You can’t pick people up with fire. You can’t knock them out with fire.
You certainly can’t tie people up with fire. It’s fire. It burns. Don’t give
your protagonist Swiss
Army Magic when it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s not quite an Arse
Grimoire, but still.
This book does sadly lack any meaningful diversity. I can’t
remember any meaningful POC, any meaningful LGBTQ characters. And Emberly moves
through an incredibly male world – with the only woman who was regularly
mentioned both a) hating Emberly and b) dying. When we consider just how many
characters and factions we have, that’s just an almost ridiculous lack.
