Jillian Conrad is having a perfectly ordinary Tuesday when, in the space of a few minutes, she finds herself a hostage of a mad scientist who injects her with poison. The only person with a chance of saving her life is the same murdering bastard who killed the man who created it. Thus begins a journey into a world where vampires are real, and a secret government-funded agency seeks any means of destroying them, the most recent the poison that has turned Jillian Conrad into a secret weapon.

Declan Reyes is Damphyr; the result of a vampire's assault and rape of his mother. He takes a serum eight times a day to keep his darker instincts from overwhelming him, but the cost is high, he also loses his humanity in the drug-dulled automaton he becomes. His increased strength and speed of healing helps him in his overriding mission to kill any vampire desperate enough to feed above ground, although his human form pays the price of disfiguring scars.

Although NIGHTSHADE indeed heralds a darker series from an author known for giving readers belly-laughs, the book was not unremittingly grim. Rowan slips in some wry and funny moments while keeping the characters' jeopardy high and the suspense ratcheting tighter. She set herself a difficult task, peopling the book with heroes and villains drawn with textured nuances, no one is wholly bad, nor wholly good, and there is a terrific plot twist near the end.

A novella in the Nightshade series (installment 1.5) is coming out in the story collection Primal the same day as NIGHTSHADE, and the second book in the series, Bloodlust is due out in July of this year.

Book Summary