30242428A bloodwalker has nothing to do with vampires. Zero, zip, nada. This book is all about Zorka Circus with Russians, Italians, Romanians, Hungarians. It’s also about humans… and the not so humane! Be warned… and make sure you read this book late at night, when it’s dark and stormy and you’re home alone.Go on, I dare you 🙂

Lightning flashes. Another child disappears…

When Zorka Circus performs, its big top roars with laughter and cheers, but when it moves on, there are fewer children in the European towns it leaves behind.

Circus Security Chief Rurik suspects a killer hides among the international performers, but they close ranks—they’ve always viewed lightning-scarred Rurik as the monster. Nevertheless, he’s determined to find the culprit and stop them before anyone else dies and the only place he can call home is ripped apart by the murders.

Into Zorka Circus comes the Skomori clan, despised as gravediggers and ghoulish bloodwalkers. A one-day truce allows bloodwalker Sylvie to marry. Instead, she finds a body. Alerting others will defy her clan’s strict rules, break the truce, and leave her an outcast.

When more bodies turn up, the killer’s trail becomes impossible to ignore. Rurik and Sylvie must follow the clues—even if they lead to something unimaginable.

For Rurik, Zorka Circus is everything. It’s his life. The circus owner Alyosha is like a father figure to Rurik as Alyosha took him in and gave him a home, a place of work and a replacement for his own constantly drunk father. Rurik was the circus strongman act until he got struck by lightning which gave him a badly scarred face. No more able to act due to his appearance, Rurik was granted the position of circus Security. What I really liked about Rurik was that he had a heart of gold and not a selfish bone in his body.

As they travel through Eastern European countries with their RVs and shows children seem to be getting missing. One night, Rurik witnesses a clown taking away one of the kids and he nearly, just about, catches the clown. Naturally, the first suspicion lands on a group of  Italian clowns in the Zorka Circus. Is it them though?

Sylvie is a bloodwalker of the Skomori clan. She is 18 and off to a marriage ceremony which is held at the Zorka Circus. The ringleader’s wife Zora is one of the most famous bloodwalkers and she would be holding the ceremony.  Sylvie hasn’t met her future husband and it’s all a big honor and hardship for the girls. Feminists would have a field day with this plot!

Her mother had promised that her groom was from a faraway city where no other Skomori lived. A man said to be modern minded. One who might not care if Sylvie forgot things, like scattering owl droppings on the hearth every month, adding spider eggs to the porridge, or hanging a rat skeleton over the bed to ensure marital harmony.

I don’t want to tell you what it is the bloodwalker does exactly, even though you may guess, it would be way more interesting for the reader to discover things as they unravel. I really did enjoy the excerpts from the Bloodwalker Book at the beginning of each Sylvie paragraph. Enjoy?… Eh, you know, such is life and knowledge is king.

If a body has been outside and subjected to the elements, do not collect it in plastic bin liners. Corpses are not garbage! Use a sheet from the deceased’s house, and remember to bring a bucket in case some parts need to be scooped up.

So who is the killer? The book will leave you guessing throughout. It points to one, then the next, and it was for me a surprise element when I found out what was going on. It was even more surprising as the culmination turned into something more sinister than I expected which definitely gave the ‘whodunnit’ an interesting horror element.

I also may have fallen in love with the ‘ugly’ Rurik. I’m not a religious person by all means, but bless him! Just proves the point that heroic and selfless men have the upper hand, I certainly wouldn’t have minded being manhandled into a ditch by him so he could offer protection.

It was a really interesting book, I’ve never read quite anything like it. At times it felt like I was reading something from the past, but it was actually modern day. I also liked how the circus folk was tied in to the story and I did meet an interesting cast of characters who really, at the end of the day, are family and have each others backs. Add to the mix that the whole action takes place in countries like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia… it’s just nice to read about a setting that’s not America or UK for a change and it might have helped with creating a more mysterious image in my head while reading.

My overall rating: 4****. The writing was good, the characters well-developed. I really loved some and disliked others (the selfish ones of course) 🙂 It was a quick read for me as my interest not once wavered. The book is focused and has a good pace and of course, Rurik… I love a male character who isn’t stuck up, arrogant and a freaking billionaire- it just shows that an MC doesn’t have to look like a baby faced magazine cover model to win over the heart of the reader.

Bloodwalker will be published on October 4th, 2016

Below are links to Amazon pages of the book where you can pre-order a paperback.

Amazon UK — Amazon USA

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