Child of the Night (Power of the Blood) by Nancy Kilpatrick

The first volume in a terrifying new erotic vampire series, POWER OF BLOOD, presenting the stories of three very contemporary and very deadly ghouls. Child of the Night -- Carol is in Paris recovering from the end of her marriage when she meets Andre, a mysterious man who tries to seduce her. The story takes a bizarre and chilling twist when Carol sees him murder a man and discovers he is in fact an ancient and powerful vampire.Andre begins to persuade her to hide his existence, and forces Carol to make a sexual arrangement with him in order to save her life - and the life of their unborn child!

This is first in a series of four books Nancy has written in the “power of the blood” world. Its an unusual take on the paranormal romance as its a vampire based romance but not the usual vulnerable female taken under dark and dangerous but gorgeous vampire. Carol is vulnerable and Andre is dark and dangerous but there are so many variances from the usual format that it makes this a refreshing story to read and I found it great that I really didn't know what was going to happen next. With so many books the storyline becomes obvious partway into the book and though this was listed as romance and I expected Carol and Andre to get together eventually there was always the uncertainty that perhaps the romance parts involved other characters that were included in the story. Its written in 3^rd person POV.

 After a divorce when Carol finds her husband has had an affair with another man and possible infected her with HIV she is holidaying in France when she meets Andre. She's unaware that he is vampire but realizes he's a dangerous man and fears for her life so she tries to make a bargain with him thinking she has nothing to lose. She becomes embroiled in the dark and dangerous world of vampires – Andre turns out to be very unpredictable and alternates between appearing to care for her and being very cruel. Its difficult to say more without spoiling the story but Carol is in for many harsh and unusual adventures before the story ends.

 The story itself starts just after her divorce and ends some ten years later with most of the years between examined briefly over a couple of chapters to keep the flow of the story going properly. I like that – I don't like those books where there's a cliffhanger chapter ending and the next begins “10 years later” - I want to know what the characters have been doing all that time even if its a brief explanation and in this story it also neatly brings in another character important to the ending. Cleverly done Nancy!


 I really enjoyed this story – it kept me guessing throughout on what would happen next which was great for holding readers interest. I really didn't anticipate so many of the story lines taking the form they did and appreciate that. I've not yet read book two and hope its a continuation of Andre and Carols story but from a quick look think it may be a different story about vampires and blood – I’m sure whatever will be interesting to read but would like to know more about Andre, Carol and the other supporting vampires form this story and what happens next to them all. Its a book that does have sex scenes but nothing too graphic and I'd be happy for teenagers to read it.


 What I didn't like: sadly there were far too many silly editing errors in the grammar of the book- things like speech marks that don't start at beginning of speech but part way through and end too soon or too late. That makes working out conversation from text difficult :( and there were times when in the middle of a block of text it moved to new paragraph for no reason, or there were part sentences which didn't make sense. I’d assume some of this was from a re-edit when the text ought to have been removed but had been left in by mistake – it’s really annoying and distracting for reader though. If the book hadn't been as good these simple errors would have meant I didn't bother to finish but Nancy has written such a good story that I had to see how it continued and persevered past the mistakes. Sadly it does mean I’m going to drop a star from my rating though because I’m quite critical of mistakes like that not being in books – they should have been picked up and corrected before release. As this is first book I'm hoping later ones have benefited and these errors won't be in them. I'm looking forward to continuing reading works from this author

It’s a good length at 488kb which I like – no novellas for me generally – usually I love to get immersed into a book. There seem to be a number of self-published books of just 10-20 pages and I’m not a reader of much that’s under 200 pages. That’s a personal choice as much as genre is so what I like won't necessarily be what you like but if you share my view then this book at just £1.92 is worth the money. It’s only available on kindle currently.

Stars – I'd give it 4 stars  for the story content which was excellent but I always include other things in my overall rating.

You may purchase Child of Night here : DarkissReads bookstore

Reviewed by Midnight Ruby