If Angels Burn

Source: Amazon Purchase

This is the first of a series by Lynn Viehl about vampires which she calls Darkyn. Alexandra Keller is a reconstructive plastic surgeon with a practice in Chicago and Michael Cyprien is a millionaire from New Orleans, with a dark secret; he is a Darkyn. The story mainly revolves around the three main characters who are Alexandra, Michael and Alexandra’s brother, John.

I’m going to start with the most unconvincing part of the story which is the romance between Alexandra and Michael. To put it bluntly, there wasn’t one. There are instances where they were attracted to each other and one instance of sex but they went from I don’t like you to I love you in 2 seconds flat which was really not believable. I believe that if the author had a little more time to develop the relationship it would have been easier as it is but the other parts of the story took over.

The second part of the story is how Michael turns Alexandra and all her struggles to accept what she is and deal with Michael’s almost Neanderthalic way of reacting to her little rebellions. After all, she is a doctor and it is only natural that she will deal with her conversion as something that she might be able to treat with science and it is equally natural that as a modern women she will not react well to being a possession of someone. This part of the story was very enjoyable and had good details and character development.

The third part of the story is the struggle between The Darkyn and the people who want to eradicate them, The Brethren. These Brethren are hiding within the Catholic Church and that is where John, Alexandra’s brother comes in. He is a priest recruited by the Brethren to go after the Darkyn, little does he know that his sister is one of them. There are many surprises in this part of the story and many interesting twists.

If you take out the romance from the equation, you have a very enjoyable story with lots of surprises and a fresh way of dealing with the vampire genre and this is why I was torn between giving it 3 or 4 stars. In the end, I decided that 4 stars was fair for the story as a whole.

Maya

Maya is a mechanical engineer and an avid reader with a love of history, mythology and culture. She is a typical Aquarian with a mean streak of reality but loves books of a paranormal and supernatural nature.

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