From the award nominated author of Bluebird comes a tale of seduction, sadism, and survival featuring malevolent vampires and a locked-room escape adventure…
Locked in a castle with a clan of devious vampires, one woman is caught in a literal fight for her life.
Vampires have always fascinated Kazan Korvic, so much so that she’s made it her life’s work to craft weapons designed solely to kill them. But when she is attacked and captured by an entire clan, Kazan’s fascination turns ferocious.
In their Citadel, Kazan is forced to attend the Vampire Court where she must act as their Queen. She is told that she will be waited-and-doted upon, until the end of her reign in three days’ time. Then, an extravagant and lavish feast will be held… where the vampires will consume their newly crowned Queen.
Desperate and afraid, Kazan finds no allies in the castle except for a pair of distractingly alluring vampires who seem sympathetic to her plight. But as she devises her escape plan, she comes to realise that she is not the only one who is trapped, and no one is prepared for how far she’s willing to go to survive…
My Review
Thanks to the lovely team at Angry Robot for my copy of this book. You’re the best humans. I reviewed Bluebird earlier in the year, and was excited to read The Hunter’s Gambit. I managed to grab a release day review on the blog tour.
Oh my goodness! This is a rollicking adventure, with seduction, vampires and lies aplenty. Kazan is a blacksmith who specialises in vampire killing weapons. In an attempt to make her name and sell a beautiful sword, she falls in with a caravan heading to the capital city of the kingdom, Mavazem. They’re attacked by hunting vampires, and in a desperate attempt to survive, Kazan runs.
Right into a pack of vampires. She fights Adrius, a feared vampire, Seneschal to one of the Houses that rule the vampires. The fight is hard and Kazan loses. She expects to die.
But she doesn’t.
When she wakes up, she’s at the Citadel, the centre of vampire power, and she’s wearing a crown.
What follows is several desperate attempts to escape, until Kazan comes to an agreement with Adrius and another Seneschal, Raya. Both of them fancy her, she fancies them, they’ve been lovers for decades. Cue the threesome.
And then they conspire to kill their enemies, take power among the vampires and get Kazan out of their alive.
Yeah, things go very wrong.
It is fabulous! Exciting, violent, desperate attempts to escape followed by despair and hope. With ghosts and vampires bent on revenge. Kazan just wants to get out alive, and does whatever she has to, to survive.
Fascinated by vampires from the first one she met as a six-year-old, she has been alone most of her life, and lies constantly to protect herself from feeling any more loss, after becoming an orphan as a child, and then being rejected by the Wardens, twice. She gloms on to Adrius and Raya as possible means to escape before realising she actually feels something for them, while believing they are playing with her. Her inability to trust makes it difficult for her to keep to the plans they make. Her anger drives the narrative forward to the climactic end.
I loved the way she dealt with the main villain. I enjoyed her morally grey character. It makes a change. She knows she isn’t a good person and is honest that she’s a liar and selfish. She’s quite conflicted about it though. She’s forced to confront her grey morality and how it effects her and people around her, and actually makes a reasonable decision. She develops as a person.
Adrius and Raya are delightfully complicated characters who are processing their own pasts and plans when they meet Kazan, who brings them a weapon to finally free them from their hated lords. They too realise they are attracted to her and feel awful when they realise they’ve messed up terribly. Raya is a loving, maternal figure, for a seductive, controlling vampire. Adrius is powerful, feared by vampires who believe he slaughtered his whole family before he became a vampire, while he carries guilt for accidentally killing his brother as a new vampire.
This book was violent and seductive. The vampires are decadent and really quite sad, for the most part. Instead of using their immortality to learn magic and gain knowledge, they spend it getting drunk and viciously murdering people, when they don’t need to. Adrius and Raya show that there are other options. The way the vampires fall apart in terror after their leaders are killed, and have to lie to themselves and each other in order to survive; a mirror of Kazan’s journey.
I enjoyed the fights, the angst and Kazan’s many attempts to escape. The relationship between Kazan, Raya and Adrius is cool. They have to work themselves and what they want from each other through mistakes and arguments, and their sexual encounter is well-written and a really good model of safe, consenting sex. The plot was engaging and I need a sequel. No, really. As soon as possible, please, Ciel.
And that chapter was hot.
About the Author
Twitter: @CielPierlot
Ciel Pierlot is a disaster bisexual from the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s also a giant nerd and no, you cannot stop her from bragging about her lightsaber collection. When she’s not writing SFF novels, she’s busy being a digital artist and a hardcore gaymer.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 
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