ONE WITH THE SHADOWS [Mass Market Paperback]

Susan Squires' Vampire series is an interesting variation on the vampire theme. Her vampires have been infected or born with a parasite within their blood called The Companion which heals, gives hypnotic power and enables them to move short distances in translocation. Of course the power of the Companion needs to be fed by blood, thus potentially causing havoc in the human population amongst whom they live. The vampire race have their Elders who live at Mirso Monastery and have formed 'The Rules' by which the vampires are all meant to live - these include not making any new vampires and only living one vampire per city. Unfortunately the females of the species seem to have world domination plans - Ashanti in some of the earlier novels and Elyta, first met in "One With The Night", in this story.

"One With The Shadows" focuses on Kate Sheridan, a young orphan whose difficult upbringing as a pickpocket has given her unusual skills. She is now eking out a living as a tarot card reader, trying to get invited to social gatherings where she can give readings in public which will gain her an entrée to private readings. However her reading in Rome in 1822 goes rather awry when a strange man arrives in the group and her reading of him seems spookily accurate. Coupled with a strange vision that she has of him being menaced by a lady with a strange emerald, Kate is unnerved by what is happening. She finds the man, Gian Umberto, very physically attractive but he's clearly a gigolo, so when she picks a man's pocket and steals a big emerald from him she's surprised to find Gian in her room asking for the gem back and that the gem has some strange attributes. Gian isn't the only person who wants it, a woman Elyta also seems to be in pursuit of it. From that point on Kate and Gian find themselves working together to keep the emerald away from Elyta and to take it somewhere safe - either Mirso Monastery or the temple in the desert from where it was originally stolen.

Like the other books written by Susan Squires this is always interesting with varied locations in both Italy and North Africa, a sea journey, a dust storm in the desert, the fascinating central vampire myth and action and characterisation in abundance. We meet two characters (Ian and Beth Rufford) who were hero and heroine from a previous book who play a small role in this one, another character who is going to be the heroine of the next book in the series "One With The Darkness" and some baddies from other books too.

The main complaint that many readers have expressed about Squires' earlier novels is the rather heavy focus on the tortures that seem to be inflicted on all the heroes, with male rapes featuring rather strongly in all the previous books. Fortunately this book focuses far less on that (although the hero still finds himself imprisoned, tortured and raped, although fortunately only for a few pages) and far more attention is instead paid to the hero's relationship with the heroine. Both characters are damaged and have closed themselves off from love and close friendship and the enjoyment in the book is seeing how Kate and Gian bring each other out of their solitary natures and find companionship with each other, despite their vast differences. There weren't any great surprises in terms of plot in this story, in fact some of the plotting elements seemed less complex in this story with more attention being paid to the romance, but I found that was a valuable change and made this book just as satisfying. All in all this was a very enjoyable read with an appealing hero, impressively phlegmatic heroine and wonderful locations for the action. A real return to form!

Originally published for Curled Up With A Good Book, www.curledup.com. © Helen Hancox 2007

Charlatan and theif, Kate uses Tarot cards to scam the rich, but when she reads Gian's future she realizes he has secrets to hide and he realizes her intuition is more than just guess work and scamming. Gian is a vampire, old and jaded...and sensual. When Kate steals a large emerald Gian pays her a visit and demands the jewel. He must have it for his own purposes. But he has met his match and Kate won't release the jewel until she gets what she wants from the handsome and darkly sexy Gian.

As always Squires delivers with unique twists, powers and endings. This is one that is hard to put down!

Also check out her previous books One With the Night!

One With the Night

While the plot of the books are fairly similar I love the difference in the vampires themselves and how they find their soul mates.