Review: `I know what it's like after the Embrace, but you need another vampire to show you the way how.'
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 1, 2014
Welsh author Margarita Felices lives in Cardiff, working her day job with a television broadcasting company and devoting her evenings and time away from work to writing novels that are influenced by the beauty and the mystery of the Cardiff environs, castles, sea and all. She has been writing short stories and now novels - this book CALL OF THE RIGHTEOUS - is Book 2 in her current JUFGMENT OF SOULS series. To quote her, `I am Gothic, I love the fashion, the architecture and the music.'  The art chosen for the cover tells much of the story.Felices places some significant words before he starts her tale; `Hunted for centuries, Reviled by mortals. We hide in the shadows, Until our return.' She then offers some fascinating background about the inclusion of Vampires aiding the Pope in the Crusades, buffs up the preparation for the story and then begins in 1715 with her main character Rachel who being involved with Max, an Ancient (protected in the abbey at Newry from attention that came from the Vampire World) has fallen victim to promises unkept and incidents involving her family. Rachel has promised to save her family. Rachel searches for Max and the missing vampire artifact to save her parents. In this book we her new best friend who happens to be mortal, meet her handsome Count destined for the guillotine and meet the Righteous, the fierce vampire hunters about whom we have been given background history before the story begins.For lovers of the vampire genre of literature Margarita Felices' manipulation of her well-constructed characters is enhance by her seemingly innate sense of style of the Gothic sense of all things hauntingly beautiful. She weaves romance, mission, and all the accoutrements of the vampire world in a terse and entertaining fashion. It is somewhat of a disadvantage if this Book 2 is read without the full background of Book 1, but Felices is fairly successful I allowing this book to stand on its own merits. Grady Harp, July 14