Tales from the Gryphon

As anticipated, the shakeup that drives Valentine away from a stable mid-level military career occurs, he is accused, court-martialed, and drummed out of the service, and goes on on a road trip, though thankfully this is no travelogue, like the thunderbolt book was. Some new things were learned, and maybe there will be some character development after all.

Ah, thank goodness. The quality of the story begins to improve; though never rising to the level of the first two books. Valentine leads his rag tag crew to rise up against the bad guys that have overrun the safe haven. However, Valentine is still getting too entrenched in the system; and that rarely works well for the kind of tales that jell for this character.

Back to the Vampire Earth series by E. E. Knight. After an mildly interesting start, the book turns decidedly soporific, It is a travelogue for a Caribbean trip that Valentine takes, with a few mildly intriguing variations. I think that a non-loner role for Valentine does not work.

The second in the Vampire Earth series by E. E. Knight, this book has our protagonist moving to the next step in the genetically augmented “hunter” clans of the human resistance. Well written, though the next stage of the character development would require the people to actually get into some relationships. Apart from that, the series is moving well along, with other team members being brought into the fold.

This is a SCi-Fi series from E. E. Knight. It is not often that one comes across a brand new series in fantasy or science fiction; and more rarely still when it has the quality of this one (The Vampire Earth series). This is a post-apocolaptic novel, the apocalypse being a virus that killed most of the human population, unleashed by a gate-travelling extra-solar species to disrupt human resistance as they took over. Ostensibly about vampires, it provides an interesting back story to explain “master” vampires and their reaper thralls.

What was captivating about this book is the detailed and generally coherent world building, the swaths of land under outsider control, where there is law and order and culling of humans for food; and the rag tag resistance. The characters are fairly well developed (though the author shies away from romantic relationships of any kind).

Not since the Recluse novels have I felt this way about a new series.