Title: Heart of Darkness
Author: Felicity Heaton
Date: 2011
Quote: "Why couldn't he bring himself to fight her?"
It's Eastern Europe, where all the classic vampires have always lived, but vampire culture has changed considerably since Dracula's and Carmilla's time. Female vampires can be soldiers as well as aristocrats and social climbers. The nature of vampires has changed, too. They were originally said to be the undead souls of humans who had been too evil to die, but now they're another species, struggling to cultivate and maintain enough humanlike qualities to have a hope of "salvation" rather than devolving back into mindless, bloodthirsty "beasts." Vampires who have developed a little "humanity," like Elise, the soldier girl vampire in this story, fight vampire hunters in self-defense and store mostly vampire hunters' blood to drink in moderate quantities. Aleksandr, who fears that he's gone back to the "beast" side, wants to kill one specific (though nameless) vampire hunter, for revenge, and drink his "tainted" blood.
Vampires, in this fictional world, have more intense pleasures to think about. They're free to enjoy a lot of sex, with female vampires becoming fertile only once in eight years, but they take even more pleasure from exchanging blood with fellow vampires. They love biting and being bitten by one another.
If this is a fictional premise you can enjoy, you'll enjoy reading about how Elise and Aleksandr bond, save each other's lives, drink each other's blood, and have several pages of explicit vampire sex. I did not get into this fantasy but some people obviously do.
Storing this novel in a house that is ever occupied by children may cause adults to die of embarrassment.
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