Rejoice, lesbian Blade fans! Annie Summerlee’s latest novel is a vampire-killer thriller that richly evokes the dank shadows, steel blades, simmering tensions and artfully moody gloom of the iconic film, amongst others. But with the singular improvement of lesbian leads!
Operating out of a deliciously gothic ruined convent, vampire hunter Rebecca spends her days nerfing bloodsuckers in industrial clubs and other unsavory locales. Haunted by the murder of her parents four years ago, Rebecca is resolved to find the vampires responsible and bring them to bloody justice. To that end, she joins a secretive organization named Callisto that promises to give her information about the deaths in exchange for her help as a hunter.
The story begins when her handler offers Rebecca the mission that will finally earn her access to the information she’s hungered after all these years. All she has to do is impersonate a rich heiress, infiltrate an ancient vampire college, and bring back the titular book of Blood and Roses. A fabled compendium of all vampire weaknesses, the book promises to turn the tide in Callisto’s crusade against bloodsuckers.
Of course, things are not as a straightforward as they sound at first offer. When Rebecca finds herself unexpectedly rooming with Aliz Astra, the daughter of vampiredom’s head honcho, her secrets suddenly seem to beat closer to the skin—skin that Aliz has taken a decidedly, delightfully un-academic interest in.
But Aliz has secrets of her own, and the twosome’s tortured, unlikely attraction is complicated by centuries of history neither of them fully know.
As dark academia tropes (secret libraries, secret-ish societies, secreted bodies) and action scenes straight out of 90s comic-book movies close in on Rebecca and Aliz, they must work together to make sure their lives and love can survive the gauntlet of forces trying to kill them.
I read this in one sitting, completely consumed in a way I haven’t been since I was a teenager. Summerhill’s setting descriptions are detailed and evocative without being bloated. The tension between the leads is peak paranormal romance angst, each of their voices distinctly colored by age and experience.
Not that either of those things keeps them from being silly sometimes. Or giving into steamy impulses that might be better left checked. The way Summerhill writes intimacy and desire is passionate. Her characters’ feelings for each other threads through most of the narrative, accompanying and heightening the emotions of the plot without overwhelming it. The abundance of dream-like scenarios and fantastical visuals that thread through the narrative also edge into the gothic, even as this remains more of a paranormal dark academia romance.
Teen/collegiate me would have been obsessed. Adult me had a pretty good time, too. Absolutely recommend this for folks looking for a gripping paranormal action romance with fresh, well-paced prose—and who don’t mind waiting for the second book in the planned duology to resolve a lot of plot threads from this first one!
(I also recommend this to people who enjoy their lesbians fallible. It was refreshing to see how messy Rebecca could be, how the point-of-view character didn’t always have a pat response for everything, and how deeply she felt about the situation around her. She’s brash, reactive, and prone to pushing boundaries in pursuit of information. She’s also mulish, does not mince words even when it might be safer to do so, and carries Batman levels of emotional baggage that drags her down at times. It was a lot of fun to read.)
Content warnings: blood, death, murder, dubious consent
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