So Dear Readers, I just finished reading Aleron, the first novel in Kane’s Strigoi series, a novel in which the author weaves a historical story of blood, death and immortality – the three things every vampire story needs.
Kane’s debut novel chronicles Aleron’s life as a mortal, his death and his rebirth as an immortal creature of the night. Told in a style similar to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, the story reads very much like a vampire’s memoir. It all begins with Aleron’s human life as a scholar in Egypt, it then moves onto him being seduced by the breathtakingly beautiful vampire Mynea and eventually we come to Aleron the vampire. Readers follow Aleron’s dark journey every step, watching as he falls in love, when he is transformed into a killer, as he battles within himself over mortality, when he learns of the ancient vampire Vlad, and much much more. The novel covers many years and many wondrous and terrifying ordeals a vampire must face.
Like most novels written by first time self-published authors, Aleron starts off a bit rocky but improves significantly with each chapter. The first half of the book was a quite tedious and dry at times, it read like a history book and was difficult to get through. But later in the book the story picked up and I found myself so immersed in Aleron that I couldn’t put it down. While the beginning of the book left a lot to be desired, the second half was captivating and featured a unique story that any horror fan can enjoy. On top of an interesting storyline, Kane’s writing shows a great level of intelligence and depth, I really enjoyed the thought-provoking inner monologues of Aleron as he experienced his life as an immortal. Besides the slow start, the other real issue I had with Aleron was the serious lack of editing and proof-reading – one of my biggest pet peeves while reading is finding errors, and Aleron had far too many.
In spite of the errors and some of the issues I had with the story, I enjoyed Kane’s Aleron and look forward to the next book in the Strigoi series. It was an interesting vampire tale that fans of history and horror could really come to love.
For more information on Aleron check out the interview I did with the author himself HERE.
You can buy your copy of Aleron HERE.
– Moonlight
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