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For five hundred years, all Stela had known was a roving life in service to her maker, Fane. But in the last century her family has built a permanent residence in the abandoned freight tunnels beneath Chicago, where anonymity reigns supreme.
Navigating the modern world is not easy and Stela, once a fierce warrior, has traded the heat of battle for petty negotiation, her sword for a pen, and her station as Fane’s enforcer to now serve as her family’s financial liaison.
When a late meeting forces Stela to visit a nearby hospital, she crosses paths with the beguiling Elizabeth Dumas—a brilliant nurse who sacrificed her academic career to care for her ailing mother. Their charged encounter will threaten the secrecy Stela has sworn to uphold, and the bond they unwittingly forge will irrevocably alter both their lives.
Worlds collide and entwine in Terrible Praise, Book One of the The Redamancy Series.
Review:
I thought I had exhausted my appetite for vampire stories, but this book proved me wrong. Here you will find intense darkness and a commentary on the hierarchies societies create in the service of the powerful . It is also a powerful love story and, as a romance reader, this is right in my wheelhouse. A debut novel, the writing is exceptional. I got the ARC for the second book and the moment I started reading it, I knew I needed to come back to this one and read it first. And I have no regrets for having done so.
The premise is fascinating. There are two kinds of vampires, born and made. Born vampires are powerful and bond according to family, like mafia clans. Made vamps are made by born vampires and work for them as a servant class. The main character, Stela is the Enforcer for Fane, her Lord and Maker, the Moroi of his family. For many centuries that meant she was a fierce and ruthless warrior who has now been put in charge of the family finances. Predictably, this lifestyle generates a restlessness as Stela longs to break out of the stifling monotony of the equivalent of a banker’s life.
Stela meets Elizabeth, a human nurse who has basically put her life on hold to care for her acerbic, ailing mother. Stela has spent a lifetime killing humans and continues to do so, a result of her biological imperative. Those scenes are described with elegant, if chilling immediacy. Elizabeth, the human, is essentially prey. Despite these differences, they find commonality in lives that are beholden to others. Elizabeth responds to Stela’s nature with curiosity, typical of her scientific training, which is surprises Stela, because most humans fear her. And their attraction, holy hell, is so powerful, they are willing to risk everything for it.
And here is where we see the power in Hayes’s writing. She gets deep into the character’s feelings, describing their attraction so intensely, you get the feeling that they sense each other at a granular, almost atomic level. The response is animalistic and the descriptions get the reader there quickly. I absolutely loved how lost I became in this couple.
Stela’s maker, Fane is a clear obstacle to their romance, exercising a proprietorship that is also sexual in nature. The scenes between them felt almost nonconsensual and while essential I believe to showing Stela’s change in feelings, these moments rightfully make the reader uncomfortable.
The strength of this book is in its writing and the ideation of a worldview in which vamps serve other vamps, leaving humans to function as prey to those in power. This is not new in itself, but there are a lot of metaphors here for patriarchy that a sensitive reader won’t miss. The easy acceptance of sexuality is also a bonus. The ending is hopeful and appropriate to a book that is the first in a series. I have the second one and I’m looking forward to getting to it.
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