Review: A great idea, in spite of my issues - but a strange epilogue sort of shoots it in the foot.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 15, 2013
I liked this better than a three-star review - but I have to say the very strange epilogue left me both shaken and irritated. A "cliffhanger" is one thing - but this seemed to undermine all the uplift and emotional impact created by the book itself, and I could not for the life of me understand why.  To me, that means the epilogue was not written in a way that opened a door to a sequel I wanted to read.This is an old-school vampire story - vampires are indeed the children of Satan, and their sole mission on earth is to kill and terrorize the human population.  Against the vampires are arrayed orders of monks (apparently only Catholics exist in this alternate world) sworn to rid the world of the Devil's spawn. Assisting the monks are the angels - working for God. Rather charmingly, the angels operate with the sort of flat-footed approach to things as Joe Friday did in "Dragnet." (This trope rather calls to mind TJ Klune's wonderful "Into This River I Drown" reviewed elsewhere by me.)But one vampire, David Derringer, is not like the others.  Apparently, because of the circumstances under which he died and was taken by Satan, he managed to hold onto a fragment of his soul. When, in the very first scene in the book, David stumbles into a Catholic church and prays for help in finding his long-lost brother, God decides to answer him.The narrative is compelling, at times moving. I could have done with less sex, because this didn't feel like it should really be a romance - it is about the power of love, but not necessarily about sex - (I'm jaded, so shoot me) - the writing is smart and clear. Everything, in fact, up to the epilogue. The author has chosen to create an epilogue that sets up the second novel, apparently.  It also seems to set up one of the characters to go through a whole different range of hellish misery than he went through in "Intercession."  That, for me, is not a selling point.Of course I will HAVE to read the sequel when it appears, but I ended this book feeling cheated by the emotional bait-and-switch. I'd love to hear comments to the defense, because maybe someone can talk me out of it.