Product Description

Regina Blake believes her mother to be the victim of murder and conspiracy. Forgoing caution and propriety, she tries to uncover the truth and bring the culprits to justice. With every step, however, she uncovers more and more evidence of a secret world of danger, sensuality and sin. With the beautiful Victoria Ash as her guide, she peels back layer after layer of this benighted world, until the true horror of it all stands exposed.

Will discovering the truth be worth damning her soul?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1162145 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 120 pages

About the Author
Philippe Boulle is the managing editor of White Wolf Fiction, and thus spends far too much time thinking about vampires and other things that go bump in the night. He is the author of a variety of roleplaying games, Tribe Novel: Red Talons, and the science fiction novellas Heavy Gear: Crisis of Faith and Heavy Gear: Blood on the Wind. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Customer Reviews

Life may only exist in the vampire world...
Philippe Boulle has created a masterpiece of Victorian Vampirism. The book is filled with mystical mysteries, and has been thoroughly researched so that the anachronistic details take you to Victorian England. I could not put the book down, and could hardly wait for book two. Now I need book three, which has not yet been published.

Regina Blake is the beautiful daughter of the Viscount Lord James Blake, who has served in the military in Egypt for most of his career, and nearly all of her life. Lady Blake is ill, and must return to England to be cared for, yet when they leave Egypt, her brother refuses to join them, and father and son are estranged.

In their English manor, Lady Emma Blake dies -- was it murder, which it certainly appears to be, or something far darker. Her mother's family, the Ducheski clan, descends on the estate to bury Emma according to their traditions. In Regina's search for the burial place of her mother, she finds far more than any girl should see.

Regina believes she is in control of her nightly wanderings in London. She can no longer talk with her father, who has turned his anger at his wife's death to the liquor bottle.

Systematically Regina is seduced into a complex relationship with Victoria Ash, who becomes her sponsor and introduces her to the true nightlife in London. Victoria is also the only one who can save Regina's life during the Morbid Initiation.

I cannot begin to reveal the story in a short review -- it is fascinating, dark, delicious, frightening, enlightening, and horrific. It is one of the best books, not just one of the best horror novels, that I have read. The characters are complex, linked through so many levels of society and blood lines, filled with emotions and danger they each are real, not just words on a piece of paper.

This is book deserves five stars.

Victoria Tarrani

WHITE WOLF SCORES WITH GASLIGHT GHOULS!
The first volume in the VICTORIAN AGE VAMPIRE trilogy is a knock-
out! It invokes images of old Hammer Dracula films and brings
back old friends we've met before in more modern chronicles--
Victoria Ash, Hesha Ruhadze, Beckett. Written in the manner of
a Victorian Gothic, the novel is a must-read not only for
VAMPIRE roleplayers, but for anyone who loves Gothic novels, the
fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel and a look at the Kindred
during the height of the Victorian era. DON'T MISS THIS ONE!!!

Fairly good vamp novel
i love vampires so i was drawn to this novel. i definitely got sucked in but it wasn't what i call an "easy read" because of the victorian age language in it. it's not something i'd sit and read for hours at a time but definitely enjoyable. i'm looking forward to the next 2 novels.