Review: The series kicks into high gear with this book.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 5, 2012
The world may be overrun by vampires, but the humans are starting to fight back. After winning a decisive victory against Nero's cabal inVampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (Vampire Apocalypse Book 1), Harris and his band of rebels are forced to escalate their resistance to acquire enough resources to sustain an increasing number of civilian refugees. This means pitting the two neighboring vampire cabals against each other in open war - with the humans caught in the middle.Author Derek Gunn lays out a very dark, very believable (OK, maybe not the whole vampire thing, but still) scenario in this series, and with this second volume the scope of the story is widened significantly. On the human side, we go from Harris and a few cohorts to a small town's worth of survivors and all the political maneuvering that brings. On the vampire side, we learn more about their hierarchies and factions, as well as some overarching rules the most powerful vampires maintain over their territories. As with the first book in the series, Gunn serves up a lot of action, and this time that includes some epic, bloody skirmishes between thralls and vampires as well as a railway scene that plays out like a blockbuster movie when you read it. The pace is fast, the stakes are high, and once you start you're going to want to barrel through to the very satisfying finish.Some of the issues I had with the first book are present here as well. The characters - especially the newer ones - tend to be thrown in with an immediate back story, and never have time to really develop. Personally, I would have loved to have seen the book expanded significantly to explore life in the survivors' compound and a more gradual development of the political turmoil that dominated the first part of the story. It would have been a good way to really get to know the characters. The book could also benefit from one more pass-through by a copy editor to clean up a few minor errors.It's not perfect, but Descent Into Chaos is an improvement over A World Torn Asunder, and a good addition to one of the better vampire-themed series out there. Fans of E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series and Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's Strain trilogy will definitely want to check out the Vampire Apocalypse.