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The premise of the book is simple: Bell becomes aware of a slave ring operating in the Midwest, and because of a promise he makes, coupled with his own experience with slavery, he makes it his crusade to wipe out the slavers. As time goes on he discovers that the problem is far more massive than initially thought, and that those he would number among his allies may be involved in the affair. This book details his initial contact with the slavers and his dealing with them, with future volumes continuing his conflict with the conspiracy.
Let me start with the good of the book. Like a well-written Executioner or Destroyer novel the villains of the book are quickly established as being evil. There is no attempt at explaining away their behavior or painting them as tragic characters: they're evil, they've accepted that fact, and they're good with it. Most of the time they also act realistically as they carry out their work, being horribly brutal and efficient in what they do, without excuses or complaints.
The plot of the book is also well-done, and the depiction of both the good and bad individuals is handled well. The story of the mysterious slave ring appears to have been given a great deal of thought, and has some interesting plot twists about it that make the reader curious as to what's going to happen next.
The book also has some nice continuity, with portions of the book linking up with parts of the first book of the Victorian Age Vampire novel, showing events from that volume from other characters' perspectives, and depicting what happened to them concurrent to the events in that book. I found this a nice touch, given the shaky continuity that has appeared between White Wolf books over the years.
The writer has also managed to have some fairly gruesome events occur without going into an excessively gory description of what has happened. I appreciated that, given the reliance of many authors in recent years to go for shock value.
Discipline use is handled well for the most part, with only one or two discrepancies between the novel and how their handled in the RPG. Props must be given for the author's excellent handling of the Presence discipline, giving an excellent example of how it can backfire on a user. My biggest complaint in this area concerns one of the characters using his Auspex in such a manner that it brought back memories of Star Wars with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader sensing each other, as a vampire inside a warehouse bustling with slaves and thugs senses an intruder outside the building. Not only is this vampire unable to sense the Obfuscating Bell with his amazing display of advanced Auspex, but later on he is unable to sense an Obfuscating vampire (one who is described as being more powerful than Bell in the Discipline) literally standing right next to him, who from his descriptions is nowhere near as powerful in his Obfuscate as this fellow has been with Auspex earlier. This boosting and dropping of the character's power level was very annoying to me, as it was strictly done to move the plot along when a plethora of other methods could have been used.
I was also befuddled by the way certain disciplines were only vaguely described (leaving those unfamiliar with the various Disciplines to be very confused while reading the book) while at the end a detailed explanation is given to the use of a Discipline that's not normally found among the Camarilla.
On a amusing note, I showed no less than four people some of the descriptions of the use of Obfuscate in this book, and they all agreed that they read like the Obfuscating vampire was suddenly developing glaucoma or a cataract.
Also, while it seems every single female vampire in this book is described as an uber-hottie, at least one is described as being this way due to Presence, which I thought was about damn time, as I can think of only one other White Wolf book where a female vampire's amazing features were identified as being Presence at work.
There are some minor problems with the book that I'm surprised weren't caught by the editing. At one point a character tasers another person while holding onto them, but is unaffected by any current that arcs between them. Also, while discussing matters with another character Theo voices knowledge that he had NEVER learned: I re-read the first hundred-odd pages to confirm the fact that the only time the information spoken ever came up was long before Theo ever became involved, in a scene which only the reader is aware of. Finally, there's a bit about midway through that reads as though a few paragraphs related to it got cut before final publication. However, none of these bits really take away from the novel as a whole.
I commented earlier that the book has villains who are realistic. Unfortunately at times the book is also like a bad b-movie, with characters acting in such over-the-top or stupid ways that they seem to be winking to the reader and saying "I know I'm just a fictional character." For example, at one point Bell encounters another vampire in the midst of a battle with the slavers. By some amazing coincidence the place they meet just happens to be where she left her sword case, and Mr. Man of Action Bell stands around and listens to her talk and allows her to draw her sword, so they can have a duel. Mind you, by this time Bell has been displayed to be a no-nonsense kind of guy who acts first and damn what his foes think. I have a horrible suspicion that the author will be using the cliche of "two heroes who fight each other, not realizing they're on the same side, and later have to team up to fight the greater evil" with this character and Bell in later novels. There are many other examples of this kind of behavior, along with some rather tired stereotypes, but most of them center around the annoying sidekick, whom I'll get to later. Just be ready for the realistic style of the novel to shift abruptly every so often as you read it.
Several times things are briefly mentioned or encountered, but never explained. While I believe some of them are going to be detailed in later books, I have the feeling that some are set-ups for crossovers in other books, ala the Victorian Age Vampire bit I mentioned earlier, or are not going to be explained at all. The latter fact upsets me greatly, as some of these mystery bits involve things that were rather important back in the early days of Vampire, and which fell to the wayside as time passed.
Bell himself is also problematic at times, with his behavior regarding mortals and upholding the Masquerade seeming to shift every so often without any explanation. Also, the word "wryly" is used to describe Bell's actions so often I'm led to believe the author owns the word and gets a kickback for every time it's used.
A big problem with Bell is that he's supposed to be a vampire around since the Victorian era, giving him a good bit of (un)life experience. I would imagine that given that lifetime of knowledge and years of experience as an archon, he would have gotten rather good at deductive reasoning. Unfortunately, Bell has a tendency of jumping to one conclusion and shooting down any attempts to go with another theory. I would think that he would be able to accept several possible answers to a question, and be willing to explore all the available possibilities. Instead he just blunders along with whatever idea he thinks is right, never suffering any consequences for this singleminded nature. To the author's credit, only once in the book is it every established that Bell is unequivocally right in one of his guesses. Unfortunately, that guess involves something that will seem totally wrong to any Vampire fan used to the Machiavellian maneuvering so common to the World of Darkness.
The reason I find this guessing very upsetting is that twice in the book things are hinted at that made me honestly think "My God, I can't believe White Wolf is doing something like this. This is so cool!" Near the end of the book Bell shoots down one of those things with a brief statement, and I fear that since Mr. Signature Character has said so it will be the way the plot goes, which saddens me greatly.
Also, the attempts to enforce in our minds just how much of a badass Bell is get rather tiresome, to the point that I laughed out loud when we're told that he parks his motorcycle in the handicap spot. Yup, all his killing and maiming would never have clued me in to his bad dude nature like him taking the handicap spot.
Now, we get to the abomination that hurts my soul just to think about it, namely the character of Delphine. Introduced to the reader shortly after she is Embraced, she, she.....
Look, let me put it to you this way. When I was reading the novel I used a 6"x9" note pad to jot down my thoughts and opinions on the book, and by the time I was done I had ten pages filled with notes on the book. 90% of those pages were complaints and problems I had involving the character in some manner.
First of all, this character is an amalgam of several of the worst character types you ever see in cinema or in books, namely:
-She is the hip, young, character who finds clues that the stodgy old characters get because they're out of touch with young people and/or society.
-She's the character who is to provide a connection to the young reader, someone they can relate to, assuming they're a drop-dead gorgeous teenage girl with a personality which could be described as ADD-affected, manic-depressive sadist.
-She's the character who (tries to) provide sharp, witty comebacks and zingers in response to the older and more established characters, even when they're totally inappropriate.
Perhaps some of the dialogue of the character will help you understand my pain. Take the following, said after her Embrace (but before she realizes what has happened to her) and asked about how her first taste of blood felt:
"Better than a mud pie, even."
Or when she starts to freak out a few lines later:
"Oh, god, first I go all gay, and now I'm a freaking blood fetishist murderer."
Maybe this bit, right after Bell suggests feeding on two teenage girls, will sum it up better for you:
"It's fucking tough being a teenage girl, and I'm not going to make it any harder than I have to. It's not as if they're after my boyfriend or anything."
I literally have dozens of these insightful bits of wisdom from Delphine in my notes on the book, but I think you get the idea. She's just so stupid and annoying that she's the major reason why I gave this book a 2 in the Style score. Having so much space devoted to such a bothersome character is something I just can't comprehend. I'm honestly curious as to the story of the slave ring and wish to get the next two novels in the series to see how it finishes up, but the thought of having to put up with Delphine and her kin in later books is seriously making me consider just giving up on the series after this book.
If you think you can get past the annoying sidekick, I imagine you'll be able to enjoy this book a good deal. But if you are the kind of person who can't deal with an incredibly annoying character taking up a good deal of space in a book, I recommend steering clear.
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