Book Review: Drink Deep

By Sandy Amazeen Aug 30, 2011, 1:09 GMT

"A strong-minded, sharp-witted heroine who will appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris\' Sookie Stackhouse series and Laurell K. Hamilton\'s Anita Blake." (Library Journal) Clouds are brewing over Cadogan House, and Merit the vampire can\'t tell if this is the darkness before the dawn, or the calm before the storm. With the city itself in turmoil over paranormals and the state threatening to pass a paranormal registration act, times have ...more

It’s been two months since that fateful night when Ethan, head of Chicago’s Cadogan House, took a stake to the heart. Like all the members of Cadogan House, Sentinel Merit is still struggling to come to terms with his loss though because of their on/off romantic entanglements she is haunted by realistic dreams as well. Frank Cabot was appointed receiver of Cadogan House by the Greenwich Presidium and is busy making life miserable by rationing blood, laying out a host of new rules and generally being a huge pain in the butt.

After a river nymph was seen evoking a spell, Lake Michigan and surrounding waterways quit moving and turned black. Even more disturbing, the lake is siphoning off all the magic in the area. With Chicago politics in an uproar, vampires make a convenient scapegoat and the new mayor is intent upon exploiting this latest disaster to his full advantage. Merit teams up with Jonah, a member of the secretive Red Guard to solve the mystery before vampires pay the price for a crime they didn’t commit but discover things are worse then they could have imagined.

Fifth of the Chicagoland Vampire series, this packs a more complex plot then some previous titles while offering a few surprises too. Merit and Jonah’s interactions are entertaining and the time has come for her to decide whether to join the Red Guard. Depth is added as favorite characters continue to get fleshed out as human and vampire politics engage in their ongoing tap dancing. The conclusion is anticlimactic and leaves lots of threads to be tied up as Merit works at making her mark on Cadogan House.