A First Look at ‘Blood Drunk’
Photo by Daniela Denyer Malo
In honour of finishing my 430th book ever read, I am bringing you a recommendation today: Blood Drunk by Ben Shepherd, which comes out this month.
This book basically deals with Freddie Burns and his story of becoming a practitioner, a kind of death magician, in a world where vampires exist too.
Now, the vampires in this world are not like the fantasy vampires that we know. They’re just your regular, not-very-nice, will-catcall-you-on-the-street type of guys. They wear tracksuits and drink blood. That’s pretty much the only thing they do. No garlic, no mirrors, no holy water, no flying, no Dracula, but they do live forever!
In this world, we also have other magical creatures, such as banshees and trolls, but instead of having werewolves to keep the vampire population under control, as most fantasies do, here we have the practitioners. The practitioners are people who absorb the magic or the energy that is released into the world when anyone or anything dies - from bugs to humans.
Freddie tells us his story - everything about who he is and how he became a practitioner, and all that he went through to get there. He's had to deal with the magical Queen of Vampires, and now he’s dedicated to hunting vampires that break the Covenant - the rulebook for magical creatures in this world.
According to the Covenant, there can only be a limited number of vampires, and there are rules for how they can feed. They have to follow all of them - otherwise, they will be chased and hunted down by practitioners, who are led by the not-so-nice Hawkings.
This is Ben Shepherd’s debut, and a really interesting one at that, because he works in the international relations field and yet decided to, in his free time, develop this urban fantasy vampire novel. As a person with a million hobbies and interests myself, I love that.
The only thing I didn’t like about this book was that it takes about the first 16 chapters to tell us what the plot of the book actually is. In fact the blurb description has very little to do with the actual events of the story.
Before that, it’s Freddie (MMC) giving us context into his life, telling us about his time at the Academy, and sharing his story as if it were his personal chronicle. But it does feel like 200 pages is a bit much for that. It goes into a lot of detail, and it takes a long time to understand where the story is going.
But once it gets there, it becomes very interesting. It kept me hooked, and frankly, it took me so much longer to get through the first 200 pages than it did to get through the last 200 pages, because when it does get interesting, when you see what the plot actually is, then you won't want to put the book down.
The ending is very twisted. You never expect what happens, and the second half of the book is just plot twist after plot twist after plot twist, and that was unexpected and really great.
So, I would recommend this book. Push through the first 200 pages if you are the kind of reader who needs a little bit of a faster pace to stay hooked, because the start is a little bit long. I will say that while it felt unnecessary at the time, once you get to the plot, you understand why those 200 pages of context are there - and they are quite relevant to the story.
So, if you’re looking for something different, and you enjoy (urban) fantasy, Blood Drunk is definitely for you.
Edited by Ainhoa Aron, Literature Editor
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