Awesome Awesome Book! ( )

Dante the rock star heads to Seatle for a gig and to check on Heather the FBi Agent. The transition is smooth from the last book. Starting right where it left off.
Dante is getting sicker, having seizures, which are quickly geting worse. Heather has sister drama, seems like non-stop. Lucien, he is being tortured by everyone it seems. Romance grows, Heather finally excepts her feelings for Dante. Von, is back his back ground is explained and he is as lovely as ever. He fight's to protect Dante and Heather from some Phyco twins and even the FBI. There is so much going on....
This is a darker book than the first, but answers many question's, and leaves many new ones to be answered. The details are fantastic. My only problem was a slow start for me, but once I got into the book, I was hooked. ( )

After the events of the last book, the powers that be are seeking to tie up loose ends and cover up Bad Seed and make sure no-one ever knows what happens. Which means people have to be silenced – which puts Dante and Heather in a very dangerous situation with some powerful forces hunting them.

In addition, the whole events, including the dramatic death of the Bad Seed agents at Dante’s hands has brought Dante to the attention of Dr. Wells, the initial founder of Bad Seed. He has plans for Dante – as does his brilliant son – and both have the tools to manipulate Dante’s shattered mind and pull him into their web.

Then there’s the Elohim; Lucien has done his best to hide Dante from his fellows, but his song is being heard and he cannot hide much longer.


This book avoided, to an extent, the main problem I had with the first book. Of course, that’s rather to be expected – my problem was the first book being too full, with too much world building and new weird words and too many characters and too many agendas made the whole book far too full and confusing and rushed. I didn’t know where I was or what everyone was doing or even what everyone was – it took a lot of back tracking and notes and head scratching to finally get everyone in the right place.

Now with all of these characters established, the world resolved and everything set, we didn’t have to face that… except I wrote “to an extent” up there – because while the world building was already set, we still had the shifting POVs, the 10 squillion unnecessary characters and the million unnecessary agendas. We had:

Heather, Dante, Von et al. The good guys! Yay!

Then there was the Shadow Branch of the government (miscellaneous nefarious folk). Their agenda is to kill everyone to cover up Bad Seed and everything that happened in the last book

Their agent/assassin Caterina has her own agenda because of her vampire mother

Rutgers is the boss of the more conventional FBI who wants to kill a different set of people from the Shadow Branch because… I’m not even sure. Spite, I think.


Dr. Wells is a nefarious scientist who started Bad Seed and wants to use Dante to his own nefarious ends

Alex is Dr. Wells son and wants to use Dante for his own nefarious ends – which are different from his dad’s.

Athena has her own agenda which is completely random and incomprehensible

Heather’s father is manipulating Annie into… I have no idea. Something.

Lucien wants to protect Dante from his fellows

Lillith wants her daughter back

Gabriel has his own agenda

And Lucifer has a separate one.

Oh and Heather would rather like to find out who killed her mother

ENOUGH! That’s a ridiculous number of characters and agendas to pack into one book. At very least trim out Rutgers or one of the angels or something! There was a moment when an assassin was pointing his gun at Von and I had no idea who he was trying to kill or why because there was so much going on.

The language was also repetitive – Dante is supernaturally beautiful. We get it. He’s yummy. Moving on. Yes, he’s angsty – we know this, can we not revisit it every 5 seconds?

Ok that’s a lengthly complaint but the problem is that the complaint is lengthly – but my overall impression of the book is good. It’s always hard to write a review where my criticism takes a long time to explain but my praise is brief – even if my praise is stronger than my criticism

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So I have to repeat the same criticism and praise with In the Blood as I had for A Rush of Wings. There was just too much going on in this book for it to get 4 stars. However, it was incredibly well written and the characters are interesting and complex. So worth the continuation of the series but still just a little too convoluted. ( )

Review posted here: http://offbeatvagabond.blogspot.com/2010/08/adrian-phoenix-in-blood-makers-song-...

In the Blood is book 2 in the Maker's Song series (hence the title) and this was just plain amazing. After the first book, I knew Adrian Phoenix was going on my favorite list. Seriously, there is good and then there is if I was stranded on an island with only one book to take with me, one of the books in this series would be my choice. Well it would actually be a fight between this or something from Karen Marie Moning.
This is one of the most unique books I have ever read. This is part two of the Maker's Song series and it is just as incredible. It is a series full of mystery, characters that are realistic (well as realistic as angels and vampires can get) and creativity. Now for a little catch up.
In the first book of the series, A Rush of Wings, we are introduced to Heather Wallace. She is an FBI agent that was in the middle of a cross country chase. Wallace was chasing the Cross Country Killer (uh, duh) and she ends up meeting a young man named Dante Baptiste (or Prejean, as a hound boy). He is a mysterious, sexy lead singer to his band, Inferno. This all blends well with his a don't-give-a-shit attitude. But Dante has a lot of issues.
Baptiste was a foster child who was molestated and used as a boy. He was stolen by a company that wanted to use him as a weapon (they calledl him S to activate him). He got out of the foster home by killing everyone (he was activated to do so) and through the activation he kills the only person that was close to him, his adopted sister, Chloe. But after the masacre, they fiddle with his brain some more and he can't remember a thing without having massive migraines, nosebleeds and seizures.
Dante also happens to be a Maker (a very powerful angel). He can literally create and destroy living things with his hands. His friend, Lucien DeNoir (who he finds out is actually his father and a fallen angel), is trying to help him not get discovered by his angel brethren because they plan on using him.
Now in In the Blood, the angels are coming after Dante and his condition is getting worse. Wallace finds Dante again and more importantly, she finds the doctor who messed up Dante's brain the first place. The doctor was trying to create the perfect child, a god. But lost Dante in Project Bad Seec (that was the name of their experiments). So he creates his own children (twins) who are both sociopaths, Alex and Athena Lyons. Athena though is schizophrenic amd Alex thinks Dante cam save her. Alex is playing trustworthy cop to get to Wallace since he knows she knows Dante and the company sccrets. Athena thinks she is Hades, God of the Underworld.
Wallace sets out to not only save Dante, the love her life, but she also wants to bring down the various companies that are after her. Other companies want to know what Wallace knows about them. Since they suspect that she not only knows Dante, but has saved his life, they sent various assassins after her and Dante. But fortunately (and unfortuantely) they seem to have their own motives.
Overall, if you want to read an original and innovative vampire series, I highly recommend this to you. It is dark, complex, destructive and a breath of fresh air. ( )