From Share My Destiny's Archive: Mark Evans No Shelter From Darkness is top shelf #vampire #fiction, #review

Mark D Evans No Cover From Darkness is a nail biting coming of age novel set among the romantic and dangerous world of World War Two London during the Nazi bombing runs that razed the city. It's a horror story in the high romantic tradition of Stoker, Stevenson, and Shelley. Evans lays groundwork for a series that promises to grow into a pulpy action horror fun, but his origin story is all character, about an orphaned girl, Beth, who grows into a vampire as she moves into puberty, and the horrors of adult life, and all it's passion and thrill which are mirrored in her vampire awakening.

Much of the action of Darkness is inward, and Elizabeth, or Beth, the protagonist is for the most part a normal girl, adopted into a middle class London family at birth, and raised in a sheltered world of school and pesky little brothers. The Nazis bombing raids wreak havoc upon the family's life, and the neighborhood, and between the terrorizing bombs and the aftermath of the explosions, Beth has plenty to worry about. Her friend Mary has lost her parents and takes up home with her family. Her mother works long hours at the hospital, and baby brother Oliver and Beth have to fend a bit for themselves among the hawkish and predatory children of a bombed out London, all the while Beth is dogged by sickness and soon learns she is not what she seems.

Evans puts you in the thick of action, and it's in these intense moments where Beth comes of age as the bombs flash, the shelter shakes, and Beth has to face her new identity, vampyre. There have been sympathetic novels about vampires before, but Evans has not only tweaked the motiff, his setting allows for a layered rich tale. The climactic scene where Beth grapples with her inner vampire nature, the paines of her new vampire body, and the doubts of her human family, the danger outside her is equally real as bombs fall around her.

The characters in No Shelter From Darkness face darkness in a variety of forms, Bill, Beth's adopted father becomes the typical distrustful parent most teenagers face, save Bill plays that role because he is a trained vampire hunter, a member of the Ministry, hiding and protecting Beth, or perhaps only coralling her, and keeping her from harming others.  Make no mistake, the action and thrills run like a spike through a vampire's heart in No Shelter from Darkness, and like the gothic novels of the previous centuries, the action is centered in the minds and hearts of the characters. Evans knows that a good thriller starts with an evocative and richly drawn world, and the characters that live there.  Four Stars.