Revenant: Blood Justice

Great Read! Something different and held my attention the whole time

A Vampire Book With a Difference

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more about Enid, her family and her quest.
It took me a chapter or two to get into the book but then was easy and interesting to read, throwing legendary figures into the fiction and introducing them and their characters with flare and originality.
Enid is a good, solid heroine and her love interest offsets her personality perfectly.
The novel is filled with a whole rainbow of characters, with great descriptions and aims, I will be reading the next instalment without hesitation.

“It was a dark and stormy night, That’s how these things are supposed to start right? Well you can forget that shit. This isn’t your average monster story. Humans use monsters to help them understand what is monstrous within them.” (Linder)

Revenant is meant to be a vampire story that sets itself apart from the rest. It is meant to show a different side of vampires than what we are used to. Though it has some unique aspects, and a fair amount of enjoyable gore, it falls fairly short compared to its promise.

The Plot: Enid sets herself apart from what is known as a typical vampire. When she was reborn, she was a Chosen One. The Chosen Ones are said to stalk the night, hunting for humans who hold darkness in their heart. They are meant to follow a path of justice, only killing humans who have lost their humanity. But there are those who no longer follow this path. Those like Countess Erzsabet Bathory. But it is against the law of The Chosen Ones to kill their own kind. Can Enid find a way to stop Erzsabet before its too late?

I had high hopes for this one. It definitely fell short for me. I was lured in with the promise of the vampires being different than the “norm”. The synopsis held a promise of vampires who don’t use mind control, yet the vampires all have the capability of using “thrall” on their victims, which is they way of mind controlling them to submission. It made a promise that these vampires were different from those who enjoyed rapacious sex, yet there was still way too much sex in the book. The back story seemed to take over too much of the book and overshadowed the plot. It also felt like there was too much “name dropping” in the book involving making a lot of people from history in to vampires. The world building fell short for me and when the main character, Enid, would have flashbacks to the 1600’s and 1800’s, she would use modern day references and slang. The characters were also not nearly as developed as I would have liked.

Enid was supposed to be the heroine of the story, and even though she stayed true to the goddess that made her The Chosen One, she enjoyed killing too much, in relation to the title of the story. She was strong, but was also petty and her personality felt forced. She enjoyed partaking in concourses together with her lover, Gabriel, but became jealous occasionally when he would do such on his own, yet constantly brought up the point of them being blood bonded and meant to be together. I think it was rather disgusting for them to claim to love each each other say they are meant to be when they enjoyed having relations with others (even if they were humans they were going to kill). This part of her personality made her just like the other vampires she claimed to be different from.

Svetlana was a confusing, conflicting character. As Enid’s sister, you would expect her to have the same values, but she claims she changed over the years and doesn’t enjoy killing anymore. She also claims to enjoy being with women after becoming bored with men over the years, which I find to be a little insulting to the LGBT community, as if its something you just choose for entertainment. She seems very weak, and though she claims that she acts out of the belief that people and monsters can change for the better, she is quite gullible and prone to getting in to trouble.

Gabriel definitely fell short for me. He could have been a real heart throb for the story, but I found his character to be off putting and undesirable. He has no real depth and, again, claims to love Enid, but enjoys entertaining other women. He is described as a “tough biker type”, but reads as shallow and nagging.

I really wanted to enjoy Revenant, but it felt like a forced, poorly executed mash up of Interview with the Vampire, Queen of the Damned, and Underworld. It seemed like the author had some great ideas that would have been great as separate stories, but decided to combine them in to one, underdeveloped, long, confusing book. I don’t think that I would recommend this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for allowing me to read this free e-copy in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more about Enid, her family and her quest.

Enjoyable book about vampires but not your normal vampire book. Well worth reading. It starts out with 2 warrior sisters from long ago that are killed in battle, only to be brought back as vampires. Excellent

​​Black Sea, 4th Century, C.E.
Enid came from the real culture that inspired the myth about the Amazon's her life in those times had not been much like Xena.  It was more like survivor, staged on the set of Sword and Sandal's flick. Throw in more disease and raw sewage and you're there_ excerpt from Revenant- blood justice.
Just like every tribe she did all that was demanded of her, at the age of 12 she got married to a young lad she never saw until their wedding. She performed her mandatory military service. 
Enid and a handful of others were left to protect and hunt for the village. Away on their hunting expenditure tragedy struck and when she came back there was little or nothing to resuscitate her burnt village.
The only person left in the village was her sister, Svetlana who weakly clutched unto life, partially balanced between life and death. Svetlana was raped, beaten brutally and buried among pale familiar faces of her family.
The last thing Enid remembers is telling her sister that they were going to be alright. Her brain seemed to die before her body and her moral eyes shut close. She was reborn
Revenant
Noun:
One that returns after death or a long absence.
NewYork, Present Day
Enid lived in the same controlled apartment for nearly eighty years and tho she never payed a dime each of her successive landlords thought of her as a modest tenant. She enjoyed the cabbies because she found them educative, once the driver was under her thrall she could find out anything she wanted stock market trends, sporting teams, city construction projects, scandals of every type. She was mostly interested in the scandal.
Enid enjoys hunting at night for potential meals aka bad guys. While she does not enjoy company she loves to keep up with humans. Knowing your prey gives you an upper hand.
Svetlana is nothing like Enid. While Enid hunts down the bad guys and drain them of their succulent juice (blood) Svetlana would rather get her blood from hospitals and have them delivered to her doorstep. She's a strange contrast to her sister considering the fact that they were powered by anger and vengeance. I guess character cannot be effaced.
And there is Enid's soulmate, Gabriel. Soulmates are made by allowing a new chosen one to have their first blood from another chosen one. This automatically binds them together 
If you give him your blood it is an eternal bond. He must drink from us to acquire blood without being beholden to any creature of this earth. Such bonds can be dangerous... You are bond for all of the time that you remain corporeal. Drink._excerpt from Revenant-Blood Justice.
The plot of the novel is centered/wrapped around Elizabeth Bathory, The Countess of Blood. Who in the novel is referred to as Erzsabet(which makes me cringe in disgust by the way), Batshitcrazy or Crazy pants by Enid. Just in real life Erzsabet is no saint. It was said Elizabeth Bathory would bath in the blood of virgins, eat chunks of their meat, kill people for sports and never failed to cover her tracks neatly. This lady was Jezebel personified, the devils incarnate, harbinger of evil. To her they were lab rats and she was the rocket scientist at who's twisted judgment determined who should live and who should seized existence that second.
Compelling cover which reminded me of a triology I really enjoyed_I am triology. 
As I flipped through the first few pages of the book I was a bit skeptical to read something with a different history of Vampires. I preferred an unadulterated version of the story where Count Dracular sired all vampires and even more skeptical when Sekhmet happened to be a cat(I have nothing against cats). To be honest the Sekhmet part hasn't digested yet and as I came across it in more pages I felt like I was forced to swallow shreded cardboard sheet with Greek yogurt #not fair.
I appreciated the brief flashbacks in the novel they made the present clearer and cleared up any confusion. 
I also appreciated The way Leslie incorporated known events properly in the novel producing a fine blend of fiction and reality in her novel. You could get lost in it and not bat an eyelid.
If you're looking for the history of vampires retold from a whole different angle. You might want to read Leslie's Revenant which happens to be a series too_ so much reburbing of the myth of our dearly beloved vampires(ahem.. I speak for my self) 
Over all I enjoyed the novel and apart from Sekhmet_the cat, it was an interesting book. 
So that's it humans, and remember...Knowledge is power because no one is off the menu_ excerpt from Revenant-blood justice.

Revenant: Blood Justice reminded me a lot of Interview with a Vampire but with far more gore and less political intrigue and sexual tension that Anne Rice's series had.