Review: I read the first in this series by Lou Harper ‘Spirit Sanguine’ and loved it, so I was really pleased to find out there was more
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 3, 2014
4.5 of 5 stars~ Review by Beverleyfor original review see Prism Book AllianceI love this series, it has helped to reinvigorate my love for vampires. Lou Harper has created a world where the existence of vampires is shown as an alternative community within our own but where other such paradigm’s have conflict between the two worlds, the conflict tends to remain between the vampires and the ones who were made ‘wrongly’ and became feral. Gabe is a slayer who, since book 1, has been employed by a very powerful, entrepreneurial vampire called Augustine as a kind of enforcer. He polices the vampire world with the help, sometimes, of his vampire lover, Harvey. Although it is possible to read Temper Sanguine as a standalone it would be such a shame because there is a rich back story that feeds into this one, making it so good.I don’t like to relate the story as the synopsis above does that but I will say the story is good with several twists and turns, as all good mysteries should have. The characters are all interesting and have adorable traits. This can definitely be said about Dill, who is the Twink with two ‘Vampire Daddies’ , and very funny in book 1. Gabe and Harvey are one of my favourite fictional couples in this genre and big bad slayer Gabe’s inability to say ‘I love you’, is very endearing. There is quite a lot of Hungarian and the odd bit of Romanian language used, and I liked it that not every character could speak English. It’s a trope I like very much where reality, here it is languages, is retained in a surreal world. Don’t be concerned the Hungarian etc., is always translated in some form or another.The author has a slightly unorthodox manner of separating the sections of the story by creating books within the novel in this one there are two books. The second one just carries on the story but a small amount of time has passed. I’m not sure it is necessary to do this for the story and I found it a little jarring but the story took up smoothly after the slight ‘moment’ of finding yourself  at Chapter 1 again. I could understand this more if the novel was very long but it isn’t.My only negative comment about Temper Sanguine would be that I wanted more. I’m not complaining about the length as such, but more time could be spent on the emotions, or the descriptions even the twists. It’s such a good alternate world I wanted, more so maybe I am complaining about the physical length too.Anyone who has seen one of my reviews knows I usually insert quotes from the book to highlight a point. I haven’t done any here. This time it was that the story was so enjoyable and carried me along in it’s fictional world and I forgot to highlight any text to quote! I think this is a very positive sign for any story.