Nocturnal Book Reviews

4.5/5
Egalley thanks to St. Martin's Press

What an utterly terrifying, repulsive and brilliant read! If you are hoping for another Kagawa or God forbid, Meyer... FORGET IT! In fact, GET AWAY from this book NOW. This is more in lieu with 30 Days of Night, I Am Legend and Priest.

That's right, you caught the gist.

Vampires here are an absolutely alien race of predators. They are fascinating and at the same time revolting. They don't have names, eat raw meat, don't laugh or show any emotions, don't sweat, can't swim if the water is higher than their necks, click and drip saliva to express their excitement or itch their wrists when someone tells them a funny joke.

In fact, humanity has been nearly extinct for more than a few generations. Remaining humans very much like rare animals are studied in Heper Institute, considered dumb and not being capable of any sort of intelligence because vamps can't get close enough to them to study. You see, they can't resist the smell of human. The taste of human meat and blood is considered such delicacy, it drives them mad, and all they want is to devour every last bit of it.

The vampire Ruler is losing his popularity and he decides to provide his "people" with a legendary entertainment, The Hunt. There is a country-wide lottery which selects ten lucky winners to join The Hunt which will exterminate the last humans.

Unfortunately, one of the hunters is Gene, who's been hiding his human nature all his life. The Lottery and consequent training for The Hunt threatens his ruse and survival. He only has few days to come up with a possible plan to escape the fate of the hunted or he will be devoured along with them.

Honestly, if I were Gene I would have offed myself a long time ago. How this boy had survived the incredible tension, the constant alienness, the raw meat diet, the incredible misery of his existence, I don't know.

The tension is palpable and building through the whole book until all is left of you is a raw tingling ball of nerves. There is a scene during the training when the team has to get used to the heper (human) smell, and they are tied to the columns while an old man walks among them. One of the hunters has a knife... He manages to get loose and so are some other hunters... By the time they are finished with the old man there is nothing left but a pile of old clothes. Gene has to witness all of it without being able to do anything. It chilled me to the bone.

The only big drawback of this book is the lack of explanations of what happened to people, how vampires came to be a dominant race and what is happening in the world as whole.

Overall, this is a breathtakingly terrifying thriller ending with a cliffhanger, leaving you desperate to know what would happen next. Recommended to anyone with strong stomachs and a healthy nervous system.