Blood Debt by Tania Huff
01/03/2005 . Source: Jennifer Howell 
pub: Orbit. 362 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 1-84149-360-0. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.orbitbooks.co.uk
Just a word of warning: it's probably best not to read this review if you haven't
read 'Blood Pact', the penultimate book in this series. Trust me. There's something
of a twist in the tale of 'Pact' that I'm loath to spoil without warning, but
I'll be damned if I can review this book without mentioning it!
Spoiler space done with, this is the fifth and final volume in Tanya Huff's
series, known variously as the 'Blood' series or the 'Vicki Nelson Mysteries'.
Depends on what mood Orbit's marketing team is in that day, I suppose...
Revolving around Vicki Nelson, a private investigator who was forced to resign
from the Toronto police force due to her deteriorating eyesight, Henry Fitzroy,
the 500 year-old bastard son of Henry VIII who's now a historical-romance writing
vampire, and Mike Celluci, Vicki's ex-police partner and on/off lover. There's
been something of a complicated love triangle going on between them but Book
Four, 'Blood Pact' did a pretty efficient job of tying up all the loose ends.
The ongoing plots and the complicated relationships between the three main characters
were finally resolved by, surprise, having Vicki seriously injured in the grand
finale and having to be made into a vampire by Henry - it's the choice most
vampire books come down to in the end, let's face it. The difference this time
around is that this particular brand of vampire lore states that no two vampires
can share the same territory after they have been 'weaned' from their creator.
So, Henry and Vicki decamped to Vancouver for a year until Vicki was self-sufficient,
at which point she moved back to Toronto to play happy-ever-after with Mike.
It was a satisfying ending that left a nice amount of questions still open -
if only because Vicki could be unreasonably scary when she was human, so the
idea of her as a creature of the night was interesting to say the least.
Vicki being Vicki, she's used her new status to pretty much carry on as before,
only better. She's still managing to be a private detective, working only at
night, and has snaffled a rather nice apartment in a slightly hostile take-over
from another female vampire. Of course, the other vamp didn't survive it, but
then that's the other aspect of Vicki that's changed...
Everything is fine until, on the other side of the country, Henry starts waking
up to a distinctly unfriendly, handless ghost every day. If that were all, it
wouldn't be so bad, but it also has a habit of killing people within hearing
distance if Henry tries to ignore it. Assuming it wants to find its murderer,
Henry calls in the only private investigator he can trust and Vicki and Mike
have to make a little unscheduled cross-country trip to help out.
'Blood Debt' really is more of a post-script to a series than an essential instalment:
it's nice to see what happened after the original ending but not strictly necessary.
The main draw is watching what vampirism has done to Vicki, but the way the
character was headed in the previous books has made this more believable than
it would be otherwise. It's like watching the same character but slightly skewed,
especially as she now has her sight back. She doesn't get to go out in daylight,
of course, but that's the price to be paid. She is stronger, faster, capable
of some form of mind control - just like Henry has always been - but in view
of Vicki's shifting morality about killing those she sees as deserving it, the
vampiric hunger has made her far less concerned about the consequences of murder.
The rest of the plot involves a business selling kidneys to patients who can
afford to pay for them. The murky world of live donors and medical business
ethics is explored to some extent but in reality far more time is spent on the
new dynamics of the previous love triangle between the main characters. Vicki
is convinced that the rules about vampires not being able to share territory
don't actually apply to her, even if she and Henry do spend most of the book
trying to tear each other's throats out. It's an interesting way to move the
situation forward but tempered nicely by Vicki's existing relationship with
Celluci and constantly posing the question of how exactly do you sustain a relationship
with someone who's not quite human anymore. It was explored pretty thoroughly
with Vicki and Henry in the previous books but obviously now we get to see it
from a fresh angle.
As a mystery/thriller, this works pretty efficiently but the focus is far more
on the vampire/relationship side this time around. As an ending to a satisfying
series, it fits well but it was never really going to work as a standalone book.
Recommended, though, if you've worked your way through the last four instalments
and are remotely curious about what happens next.
Jennifer Howell 
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