Rises the Night, by Colleen Gleason

Rating: 4/5
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
334 pages
2007
Source: My collection

Description: Lady Victoria Gardella Grantworth de Lacy has been a vampire slayer for just over a year, balancing her life as a peer of Society with the dangerous role that takes her out on moonlit streets, stake in hand. She has learned brutal and heartbreaking lessons about the sacrifices that must be made in order to save humanity from the evil that secretly preys upon it, but she has not wavered in her vow to fight on.

Now in Italy, a powerful vampire is amassing the power to control the souls of the dead. As Victoria races across Europe to stop what could be the most deadly army the Gardellas have ever faced, her unlikely companion is Sebastian Vioget, a man as tempting as he is untrustworthy. But when Victoria discovers that she has been betrayed by one of her most trusted allies, the truth will challenge her powers as a Ventor and as a woman... (From the back cover)


Review: This is the second book in The Gardella Vampire Chronicles series. The books do stand alone well enough that you don't have to have read the previous ones to follow the story. Unfortunately, this leads to somewhat awkwardly incorporated info dumps. They are spread out and may seem less problematic if you don't already know the information, but there's a lot of things that need explaining. They also, obviously, contain spoilers for the previous books, so if you suspect you'll want to read the whole series, it would be better to read them in order.

Other than the info dumps, I think this works somewhat better than the previous book. It felt a bit less Buffyish to me, which helps. This volume focuses less on Victoria trying to have a normal life, which given the events of the first book is understandable, and focuses more on the conflicts between her and people who know what she is, but have their own agendas.

We learn a lot more about the mysterious Sebastian, and her fellow Ventor Max, and get a better look at various humans who have a different view of vampires than Ventors do. These humans also allow the bad guys to take some smarter actions when it comes to dealing with Ventors.

The plot of this book once again centers around a powerful vampire and a magic object and very similar goals, but it isn't a retread of the plot of the first book and while the reader will probably have less doubts about what Max is up to than Victoria does, he does do things that may surprise the reader as much as they do our heroine.

Overall, a solid follow-up to the first book.