Blood Skies by Steven Montano

In Blood Skies the world as we know it has been smashed together with other worlds by an apocalyptic event known only as "The Black".  Cities that never were have appeared over night and cities that once were have been laid waste as the world shifted - and the things from our nightmares have returned.

That means vampires, zombies, and other horrors that like to eat or enslave people.  The only positive?  Magic has also returned.  It just comes with a price most of the time.

Mad Max with Magic and Real Vampires.  Hell Yeah!

The story is set 22 years after The Black as an organised faction of humanity, the Southern Claw Alliance, is locked in a stalemate in their war with the vampires of the Ebon Cities.  The vampires can't win any gains due to the bravery and growing powers of the human witches and warlocks, however, a powerful member of the Southern Claw, the witch Red, has stolen information which would give the vampires all of this knowledge and the power to destroy the Southern Claw as a result.

Enter the main character; Eric Cross.  Eric is a warlock in the service of the Southern Claw.  That means that he has a sort of guardian spirit that he can use to lash out in combat or shield himself from harm as well as perform other magics.  Of course there is a price to pay and using the spirit basically means he is guaranteed a short lifespan but when the only other option is being a vampires meal it seems reasonable...

Cross and his unit are tasked with finding and stopping Red at all costs before she can doom them all.

This book made me stop putting a rough genre guide at the top of my posts.  It was too hard to classify it neatly.  Its not a pure fantasy book because the setting has so many science fiction elements to it and overlaying the lot is a strong horror theme.  

Blood Skies has such a strong horror theme because of the atmosphere the book maintains throughout, something that the writer does really well through use of a dark visual imagery system.    As an example the very first paragraph of the book: 

He sees the city. It stands beyond fields of broken sand and salt estuaries, at the edge of a frozen sea, opposite a forlorn tower of black metal and razor protrusions. It is a city of the living.

It looks unnatural, like it doesn't belong.

Nothing in the world of Blood Skies is clean, it is always cold, broken, diseased. References to the world before The Black, by contract, are clean and bright but vague and soon to be forgotten memories.  Where ice, ash and darkness aren't the prevailing colors its sickly blood red or necrotic black.  This constant use of dark imagery really draws you in and reinforces the fact that the world in which Cross lives is a shattered and dying one.

The writer also takes his time revealing the rules and background of his setting to you.  This is something that I would normally be annoyed by, however, it fit in this setting as it helped to enhance the sense of dislocation that The Black seemed to be all about.  A risky strategy to use as it could have lost me but it was well enough done that it actually piqued my interest rather than leaving me confused.

Imagery and atmosphere are definitely the major strengths of the book.  

The adventure itself is exciting and sees Cross and his companions traverse a significant amount of the Blood Skies world including an undead city and a human town that has surrendered to the Ebon Cities.  There is plenty of action and those scenes are well written but the book is definitely not just about the combat. I say this despite the fact that the author refers to the book (series) as a "dystopian military dark epic fantasy. with real vampires." on his blog.

So where does it fail? 

Cross is an interesting character and develops as the book goes on, however, a lot of the other characters in the book aren't as well developed and don't grow much.  To be fair, this is often because life expectancy in the  Blood Skies world appears to be quite brief.

There are a number of spelling and grammatical errors.  Yes.  Pot.  Kettle.  Black.  I realize.  My work is just a blog not a book though and improving all the time (yeah that's what I tell myself...).  The errors in the end weren't enough to put me off or disrupt the flow of reading but if removed would leave the work feeling polished.

Also there is one scene in the book that left me going WTF.  The characters until then had made smart choices that tied in with their mission but at that one point they just sort of went off the reservation. It may have been in character but given the importance of what they were trying to achieve (stopping Red and saving mankind) it was bizarre.  I cant say more than that without spoilers but if you read the book you will get me.  

Despite those failings I have to be honest and say I loved Blood Skies (I made myself sit down and think of some negatives - I haven't pushed myself to do that until now).  It drew me in and I finished it in a matter of days.  

I loved it so much in fact that having read Blood Skies I knocked over Black Scars, the second book in the series, last night and will probably start Soulrazor (book 3) tonight.  The spelling errors persist (at one point yield is used instead of wield) but Cross keeps growing as a character and new ones come on board.

Oh, and the vampires in Blood Skies don't sparkle (possibly why the author refers to them as Real Vampires.  They are truly monstrous in this series - becoming one means losing yourself not just getting super powers in exchange for wanting to drink blood and they definitely aren't pretty.  

Steven Montano has his own blog here.