reviewed by
SHERI MORTON STANLEY
What the--?
Wait, wait, let me start over.
In a word: Awful. No, Godawful. This is the purplest prose that was
ever purpled. Pretentious. Overwrought. Verbose. Did I mention purple?
And failed metaphors. To wit:
“My blood rose to the bite, as if it were meeting [her] lips and tongue.”
(My inner snark: That’s because it was meeting her lips and tongue,
unless perchance the author meant that it introduced itself politely. Did they
shake metaphorical hands? Were there calling cards involved?)
It features intentional misspellings (“Vampyrism”), names with lots of Y’s,
and gratuitous capitalizations. (“the Fallen”, “…her Sacred Kiss”, etc.)
And I’m only on page 3.
Priest of Blood is the pseudo-medieval tale of a vampire (oh, excuse me, “
vampyre”) warrior-peasant, told in first person. It reads like it was written
by a 16 year old boy who just discovered Elric of Melnibone and now thinks he
can write epic stories about strapping warriors and scantily-clad women. My
initial reaction was to wonder if the author had written this as a teenager,
and pulled it out to avoid missing a deadline with his publisher.
The weird thing is, I’ve read (and enjoyed) several of Doug Clegg’s
previous novels. He writes contemporary horror tales, effective and chilling. To
date, none of them have contained the rampant comma abuse, florid speech,
overwrought prose and ineffective metaphors that fill Priest of Blood.
Save your money, re-read some other epic warrior saga, and hope that Clegg
goes back to the kind of fiction he’s good at.
