Heir of Blood and Moonlight by Lindsey Sparks is a why choose romance set in a fantasy world, featuring a vampire heroine hiding from the dangers of her past, and several love interests of various different magical persuasions trying to keep her safe and fulfill her destiny. It is the first book in the ongoing series, The Last Vampire Queen.
Sophie has been masquerading as a human librarian for most of her life, hiding from the assassins who killed her entire family when she was a child. As a living vampire, without a steady source of immortal blood to sustain her, she is slowly dying.
But one fateful night out at a club changes everything. Two different wildly sexy men find their way into her orbit, and a few drops of immortal blood is all it takes to start bringing Sophie back to life. With her new awareness comes new dangers, and Sophie’s quiet life becomes so much more complicated. But she’s far from alone. She has so many men working to serve her, just like in her wildest dreams.
Heir of Blood and Moonlight is told from Sophie’s perspective, and she’s quite unique for a fantasy heroine. For starters, she’s thirty-four, which is a departure from the typical nineteen-year-old fantasy heroine. Despite her relative maturity, Sophie still moves through the story with innocence. Because she has spent so much of her life pretending to be human, she was raised not to know much about her own kind, to make it easier to live as a human. As a result, she’s learning about her powers right alongside the readers.
There are seven love interests in this story, but readers don’t get to meet all of them in this book. We know there are seven, but not all of them make an appearance. They are all pretty classic why choose archetypes, with a fantasy bent. There is a shifter and some vampires and who knows what else will materialize as the series goes on.
Frankly, none of these characters really spoke to me as individuals yet. There was not much that made them stand out, but I found myself engaged in the plot and spice enough to forgive it, and perhaps the next book in the series will make these characters solidify into something more.
There is a great deal of action in Heir of Blood and Moonlight — in terms of both plot and spice. Things move quickly, and there’s always something going on to keep readers turning the page. There is some unnecessary detail in the writing, describing Sophie’s every movement as she brushes her teeth, for example, but for the most part, the writing is fast-paced, although it could have used another round of edits.
The world building in this book is its highpoint, along with the spice. It’s both fascinating and quite clear and simple to follow, which is important in a why choose fantasy where there is already so much going on for readers to follow.
In any situation in which there are multiple simultaneous lovers in a book, readers can safely assume that said book will be on the smuttier end of the spectrum. To add to that fact, in Heir of Blood and Moonlight, sex is integrated with Sophie’s magic, and plays a huge part in her role in this magical system. So if you pick up this book, expect lots of sex scenes, most of which are pretty standard for a why choose romance.
A heartbreaking plot twist in the second half of the book is by far the most touching and emotional portion of this book. This scene alone convinced me to continue with this series when the next book comes out in May, despite the minor issues I have with the writing.
Leave a Reply