Written in the Blood
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
WRITTEN IN THE BLOOD is the blistering follow-up to Stephen Lloyd Jones' acclaimed debut novel and Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club pick, THE STRING DIARIES.
High in the mountains of the Swiss Alps Leah Wilde is about to gamble her life to bring a powerful man an offer. A promise.
Leah has heard the dark stories about him and knows she is walking into the lion's den. But her options are running out. Her rare lineage, kept secret for years, is under terrible threat. That is, unless Leah and her mother Hannah are prepared to join up with their once deadly enemies.
Should the prey ever trust the predator?
Is hope for future generations ever enough to wash away the sins of the past?
With a new and chilling danger stalking them all, and the survival of their society at stake, they may have little choice...
THE NEW NOVEL BY STEPHEN LLOYD JONES IS AVAILABLE NOW - THE SILENCED: A DARK AND GRIPPING THRILLER
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Jones's ponderous sequel to 2014's The String Diaries focuses on heroic Leah Wilde, a hybrid member of a wealthy and powerful dynasty of shape-shifters, the hossz letek. Since their birth rate is low, Leah must persuade her paranoid line that a new way has been found for hossz letek to reproduce. While doing so, Leah is pursued by a deranged hossz letek, as well as by the tolvaj, an evil creature that feeds on the souls of shape-shifters. In a flashback, orphan Izs k Bal zs faces the tolvaj during a pogrom of the hossz letek in Hungary of 1880 that seems to mark the end of the hossz letek. The story moves forward at a turgid pace as the author hops from subplot to subplot and holds back information that his characters are aware of but the reader is not. Pointillist sensory descriptions nicely evoke the setting, however, and characters are well-drawn gothic types. A rousing finale belies this fantasy thriller's frustrating middle portion.
