Author: Stefan Petrucha
No of Pages: 352
Release Date: 26 October 2010
Man and monster are in his blood...
His name is Jeremiah Fall. A soldier of fortune, he has been fighting his own war for 150 years—ever since the beast in him was born.
Desperate to restore his lost humanity, Fall crosses the sands of Egypt, discovers a lost city off the coast of France, and finally arrives at the birthplace of all mankind. Shunning daylight and feeding only when he must, he battles the monster who transformed him forever. He can share his deepest secret with no one . . . not even the beautiful woman he starts to love, the only human who grasps the mysteries of an ebony stone as old as creation itself.
Across the world, across time, Fall seeks the stone's secret. But has he found a cure for himself or unleashed a final curse on all mankind?
My Thoughts:
Blood Prophecy to a while to get going, but once it did it became very interesting.
Jeremiah Fall has gone from a hard working Purist to a bear-fighting, vampiric army of one. Blood Prophecy is the tale of how he finds his roots and reconciles his two-selves. Jeremiah travels from America to Egypt in his search for the Stone. A legend he heard from the tribe of Abenaki’s living near his settlement.
Jeremiah is an interesting character. He was raised a Purist which is a very strict form of Christian. Purists aren’t allowed to smile and must work hard every day for their salvation. Once Jeremiah is attacked and turned into a vampire he struggles with his Purist mentality, as he learns about other civilisations, other beliefs and battles with the beast inside himself that constantly telling him to kill.
Blood Prophecy is written differently to many vampire novels that I have read so far. Petrucha doesn’t delve deep into the mentality of Jeremiah; he also doesn’t waste time with descriptions and needless filler. We are constantly given more parts of the story, more threads to unravel the mystery and are time jumping like there is no tomorrow, which if Jeremiah fails there won’t be.
We travel from the year 1644 to the year 1799 in a matter of chapters with only a few details in between. There isn’t a lot of travel; there isn’t a lot of dialogue, just searching and discovery. It was a refreshing novel to read provided one is in the mentality to read it. I will admit that with the lack of secondary character development and the constant search for the stone had me falling asleep at times if I just wasn’t in the mood.
Blood Prophecy is about the journey rather than the characters and considering how interesting and fast paced that journey was, it became the main pull for continuing the story. Will he get there in time? Will he become human again if he succeeds? Will the evil Bandite worshipers win and release their god, ultimately destroying the world?
Blood Prophecy had many religious elements to it, but these elements were historical rather than evangelistic. Petrucha took different translations of the book of Genesis and combined them all into one story; he pinpointed the Garden of Eden in Egypt and the roots of many old nursery rhymes and created Blood Prophecy from it.
Blood Prophecy was very interesting and piqued my curiosity with the historical and paranormal elements surrounding it. Watching Jeremiah struggle with who he was and continue to fight what he seemed destined to be was intriguing and had me turning pages very quickly towards the end.
