Infinite Days (fiction)

No sparkly, baseball-playing vampires in this book which hearkens back to the original vampire tradition with bloodlust and cruelty. But there's a price to be paid for this blood-transmitted immortality, as these vampires lose their sense of touch over time, rather like being encased in glass (not the usual vampiric super-senses).

So Lenah becomes human and rejoices in the life and loveliness of the mortal world, until... You knew there had to be an "until..." to make the story work, right? Conflict, struggle for power = some things never seem to change, whatever world you're in, so hang on for a wild ride as Lenah starts living as a modern teenager and trying to stay alive, too.

Release date for the sequel, Stolen Nights, has been pushed back to June 1, 2012. Maizel notes on her blog "As my editor says, second books are always the most difficult. And she is 100% right." Hmmm...wonder how early you can pre-order a book?
**kmm

Book info: Infinite Days / Rebecca Maizel. (Vampire Queen, Book 1) St. Martin's Griffin, 2010. 336 pg paperback [author's website] [author's blog] [publisher site] [book trailer] [Italian book trailer]

Recommendation: Vampires lose sense of touch over time. Lenah, a 500-year old Vampire Queen, longs to be human again and to truly feel, after centuries of ruthless hunting and feeding, viciously cruel hunting and feeding.

But the ritual for returning her humanity is hidden and difficult, involving true sacrifice by another vampire, the most selfish of all creatures. Even more difficult would be hiding her new mortal status from the vampires she created, who will then view her as new prey, rather than their leader. So she starts a 100 year hibernation, while Rhode, who made her a vampire and loves her for eternity, finds the ritual’s instructions and steals her body from the English crypt in the 99th year.

Waking up on a New England morning, Lenah sees sunlight for the first time in almost 600 years and realizes that Rhode has helped her become human again, even as he dies in the daylight. Now she must cope with the technology which developed as she slept, along with all the teen tensions of a private high school. Finding friends and relationships, realizing that machines now can capture music, enjoying food and breezes and the sea, Lenah learns about life and new love, even as she tries to ignore the calendar days moving toward her supposed awakening from hibernation.

Will the other vampires find her here? Are her friends at school in danger of losing their lives? Their mortal souls? Did Rhode’s sacrifice buy her time to truly live or merely months before her doom? First in a new series. (One of 5,000 books recommended on www.abookandahug.com)