*I received an ecopy of this book from the author. This has not influenced my review.*

I have said before that I want books about vampires in space, and I finally got one!

I loved the vibe of this book. So mysterious and tense. A small crew out in the void of space. Their navigator a potentially dangerous, incredibly intelligent vampire with hypnotism powers locked away in a container. Weird things start happening. Things start going wrong.

I loved the writing style. It was very eloquent and built up the tension so well. The description compares this book to Interview with the Vampire, and that’s actually a pretty good comparison in terms of the feel of the writing and how it’s a person telling their story, more so than the fact that there’s a vampire in it.

He was an interesting vampire though. At first I didn’t understand why everyone was so scared of him, he clearly wasn’t some feral monster. But then we met him, and I was like, “Oh, I get it now.” Lots of vampires in books have mind control powers, but somehow it was portrayed here in a way that felt so much more ominous and scary. His sheer power and presence and composure made him scary, even if he wasn’t doing or saying anything threatening. Though I did find it funny how *SPOILER* he promised he wouldn’t hypnotize anyone on the crew in the deal he made with Anders, and then he immediately hypnotized everyone. Not even maliciously though. He erased their memories of him healing Po’s injury so they wouldn’t know about his magic and then made them all calm and ok with the fact that he was there with them. I think he was just so used to using that power to his advantage that he didn’t even think twice about it. *END SPOILER* There wasn’t a lot of vampiring in this book, it was mostly just that he was immortal and had some interesting abilities, but it was still cool.

There’s also some other weird supernatural stuff that goes down, it’s not just the vampire.

A few things didn’t really have an explanation, and I can’t tell if there was one I wasn’t told or if I was just meant to not think about it. *SPOILER* Like how did the blood from Po’s injury get cleaned up so fast? And how did it get off his and the doctor’s and everyone’s clothes? And if whoever was controlling Erebus had enough control to seal him in a container and send him out into space, why were they unable to kill him with sunlight or silver? He said it was because he had powers and tricks of his own or whatever, but then it doesn’t make sense they’d get him sealed away. Though now that I’m thinking more about it, that could just have to do with his sister’s machinations. *END SPOILER* And some things I just didn’t quite understand, like *SPOILER* what Anders’s plan was when he went to confront Erebus, what good locking him out of his container was supposed to do, *END SPOILER* and some of the MC’s emotional revelations. The ending also felt a bit confusing/abrupt, but it might be meant to lead into another book, in which case I imagine there will be answers. And despite these things, I still enjoyed the story.

Overall, the writing was eloquent, the mood was mysterious and tense, and the story had me hooked!

*Rating: 4 Stars // Read Date: 2023 // Format: Ebook via TTS*