1/5 stars
The book started off with the main character, Matt, waiting to go on a raid with his vampire clan. The raid started, and Matt was told by his friend to follow her. So he did, and his friend led him to a strange building. Matt was then chained, and his friend told him that she was selling him. He was upset, but before he can do anything, she was paid and had left.
After Matt was sold, he was sent on a mission for the person who bought him.
Matt was excited when he got back from the mission because he finally felt accepted by the vampires in the agency. But then after some things happened with the other vampires, he realized that not everyone liked him. And he was upset, so he left and wandered through the agency building. He was told not to go into any rooms, but he heard something behind one and went in. He discovered that there were spirits of dead agency members in the room, because apparently they aren’t allowed in the afterlife. X found him and pulled him from the room, and said that she knew he would be able to hear the spirits. And then she told him that she had a lot to tell him. She told him that he was able to see dead people, and that the world was in danger.
X revealed to Matt that there was a prophecy about twins who would save the world. She revealed that he was the twin mentioned in the prophecy, and that he had a sister.
The mission X sent Matt on was to go retrieve a really powerful gem from a bad vampire. While he was getting the gem, the gem did something to the bad guy and he disappeared. Matt thought he was dead. But then he had a dream where his sister told him that the bad guy was coming for him and he was confused until his sister told him that the gem didn’t kill the bad guy, it only sent him to another dimension. Halfway through the book, this was the first time an alternate dimension was mentioned.
X said that Markus will return much stronger than before, and will be nearly impossible to kill. Why? And how do you know that? Because of this, X is going to send all nine of the agency’s vampires. Apparently Matt is the only one who can kill Markus. The reason that was given was that it was his destiny. Matt protested, saying that he wasn’t strong enough. But then everyone piped up saying that he was strong enough, and he’d progressed so much over the past week. I would have rather been shown his progress, instead of being told that he had progressed. The book completely skipped over the week of training.
Matt and the other vampires traveled to where Marcus was going to reappear, and Matt and another vampire took the first watch. Then Matt’s sister Madeline suddenly appeared and they talked for a bit, then they were visited by spirits who warned Madeline that Marcus was coming. They rushed back to camp, and one of the vampires suddenly said to Matt that she thought she was falling in love with him and that she needed him to come back to her. Matt cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. This literally came out of nowhere. There was absolutely no buildup to it. So while a scene like that can have a big impact on the story, the characters, and the reader, it completely fell flat because there was no buildup to it.
One of the vampires then said that they would wait by the portal in case any demons came out. There are demons now? It would have been nice if they were introduced/mentioned earlier, instead of around 80% of the way through the book.
Matt killed Markus in a short, easy battle. I thought Markus was going to be nearly impossible to defeat, but Matt seemed to have little trouble killing him.
I did not enjoy this book at all. It had the bare bones of a good story, but it was lacking. It needed more depth, better world building, and better character creation. The main character spent nearly the entire book whining about how he wasn’t the chosen one, and how he wasn’t strong enough to defeat Markus. This book needed more meat to it.
I did like how it was clean. There wasn’t any swearing, and no explicit scenes. It wasn’t too violent either. The author bio said that the author attended a children’s book class, so maybe this book was intended for younger audiences.
Fireheart Books 