Blog Tour Review: Blood Sin – Marie Treanor

Blood Sin by Marie Treanor
Series:  Awakened by Blood #2
Release Date:  April 5, 2011
Publisher:  Penguin
Page Count:  336
Source:  Bewitching Book Tours
Buy the book at: Amazon 

Months after her dangerous encounter with the vampire overlord Saloman, Scottish academic Elizabeth Silk is still trying to cope with both the demands of her vampire-hunting bloodline-and the desire she feels for Saloman, the immortal she brought back from the grave. But when Saloman’s ancient sword becomes the object of a ruthless race between humans and vampires, Elizabeth must decide between unwanted loyalty, or unholy love.

Elizabeth Silk has spent the last sixth months trying to figure out what hew recently discovered vampire hunting background means to her life as well as dealing with her feeling for Saloman.  She’s fine-tuning her thesis and teaching at St. Andrews University, but at night she’s left to overthink and contemplate all things Saloman.  To try and curb her endless thinking of Saloman, she’s contacting Tsigana descendants in hopes of warning them of the Saloman threat.  She didn’t expect her distant cousin, movie star Josh Alexander, to have the one item that would make him Saloman’s target.  She’s made it her job to protect Josh, at all costs, against the man she loves.

Saloman has been very busy the past six months.  He’s worked very hard to become the overlord of most of the European and South American vampires.  He now has his sights on two things:  having the American vampires fall under his rule and getting back his sword, which is currently in one Josh Alexander’s possession.  He finds the perfectly opportunity to snatch it back when he’s invited to a weekend party at the vacation home of Senator Dante Greyson in Scotland.

The Senator has managed to coerce Josh to bring the sword with him to the party, under the guise of having is appraised.  But he has more in mind for that sword.  He needs the sword of the great Ancient Saloman in his bid for ultimate power.

Elizabeth and Saloman must now work together to find out why Dante wants the sword so badly, all while Elizabeth tries her hardest to protect her cousin from meeting the end of Saloman’s pointy incisors and help the hunters ensure Saloman doesn’t possess the sword.

I really, really enjoyed this installment in the series.  We found a depth to both characters that we didn’t see if the first book.  Elizabeth struggles with her feelings for Saloman and all the things that he’s working for that go against her way of thinking.  While she tries very hard to sway his way of thinking, she can’t help but fall more and more in love with him, while hating herself a little bit more knowing he’ll never feel for her the way she feels for him.  She’s almost reminded me of an abuse victim, who knows what’s going on is wrong and knows she should break away, but just can’t seem to do it.  It’s a little heartbreaking.

Saloman is still the smug, arrogant bastard that he was in Blood on Silk, but we start to see cracks in that foundation.  Sure he still wants world domination, but he also starts teaching vampires to live a different way of life (such as you can drink from a human, but you don’t need to kill them).  His ultimate goal is for both humans and vampires to co-exist as they did a millennium ago.  You can see that part of Elizabeth’s initial arguments with him have made him changed his course, while still doing what he wants.  But Elizabeth is never far from his thoughts.  He’s not sure why he feels for her the way he does (and he does compare the other woman he’s slept with in the past six months to her), but she’s a distraction he’s willing to play with again.

Both characters seem to realize there is something about the other, no matter how much they themselves may object or their friends to their relationship, that keeps drawing them together.  It’s finally Elizabeth who decides Saloman is worth fighting for…no matter what.

A superb addition to the series which sets us up perfectly for the finale book, Blood Eternal.