Wednesday 9 January 2013

Legacy of the Vampire, The Pits, Kristofer McLaren



Publishers: Aventura eBooks Limited


Pages: 102


Main Characters:

Sirus, Kali (Kal)



The year is 1777 and Conner wakes in a dark dank cave with feelings he has never felt before. He knows he is now not the person he was before his death a few days earlier, he is now a vampire. Conner is not alone in the cave, Kali (Kal) a female vampire has brought him back to life and now wishes to raise him and teach him in the ways of being a vampire.  Conner knows he cannot return to his human life that he lived before his death and decides to take a new name, Sirus.

Kal takes Sirus to see her mentor Prince. Prince is very sceptical of Sirus and demands that Kal kill him and try again at creating a new vampire, one that is stronger. Sirus, in an effort to show his strength accidently kills Prince. Unfortunately for Sirus and the rest of the vampire race, Prince was a peacekeeper between humans and vampires. Without the influence of Prince to keep the peace between the races an all-out war breaks out and Sirus loses his mentor Kal.

Stretching forward two hundred years and the vampires have lost the war. They’re now kept like animals in ‘houses’ that’s sole purpose is to fight against other houses in hand to hand combat. Sirus is in one of these houses and is been treated like a dog. With his fiery will, Sirus refuses to conform to the human’s system, but his desire to live and eventually become free means his is the best fighter in his house, that is until he comes across Kal in the arena.

The epic fight between Kal and Sirus convinces Kal’s owner to buy Sirus from his old house. When reunited with his old mentor, Sirus’s urge to escape becomes much more urgent. Moreover, when the father of all vampires Cain is brought into the house, Sirus is even more inspired to escape. Nevertheless, with the odds sacked highly against him will Sirus manage an escape and can he grant the vampire’s freedom from human oppression?

I’m not usually a fan of vampire novels but I was pleasantly surprised reading this book as it was really enjoyable! The book is written by Kristofer McLaren, who funnily enough I know, as he is from the same town as I am and is friends with my brother! He is a young writer and I thought reading this book did great credit to other young writers who are aspiring to write their own novels. The book was exciting to read and in places really quite clever; I especially liked the sub-plot of Cain been the first Vampire and murdering Abel (a human). I also really like the fact that Kris mixed in a bit of sci-fi into this novel (which I’m loving reading at the moment!), making it different from many other Vampire novels that are based for young adults. It shows that your age doesn’t matter in writing, as long as you have a good imagination you can write a good book!

However, I found some little issues with the book. The first was that basing the start of the book in a cave made it hard to work out when the book is set. I knew it was in the past but it isn’t until the third or fourth chapter until you are told that the year is 1777, and that is only in a passing comment! I just think it would have made the book easier to imagine at the start if this fact was put in earlier. The other small issue was that there were some small editorial issues with grammar in some places. Nevertheless, these two tiny issues didn’t detract from how enjoyable this book was to read.

All in all, this book was very enjoyable! I would suggest it to anyone who enjoys vampire novels and if like me you wanted to read one that was a little bit different, this book is for you! If you’d like to purchase the book it is available for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk or for on other eReaders it is available on Smashwords.com

For author's official website click here.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my Book of the Month Competition for your chance to win a FREE copy of the Wolf Dawn by Susan Cartwright! To enter, just follow the instructions on this post and for more information click here.

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