Blood Legacy
Review by The Mad Bibliographer, submitted on 28-Oct-2001

Adapted from "Vampires in Print" in The Vampire's Crypt #2 (Summer 1990).

Review by Cathy Krusberg

Prudence Foster. Blood Legacy (Pocket, 1989)

The most disappointing thing about Blood Legacy is that its premise shows so much promise -- which the book almost painstakingly fails to fulfill. The original Ferencz Nadasdy comes to America to reclaim the reincarnation of Erzsebet Bathory: Angelique Gaudet, proprietor of a bookshop in quiet Fort McIntyre, Florida. While Nadasdy is trying to waken Angelique's recollections of her former life, vampires Ilona and Dorko (who have accompanied him to America) work at cross-purposes with him; they don't want Angelique for competition. Police Lieutenant Gil Spencer is equally intent on wooing Angelique, when he's not busy investigating yet another blood-drained corpse. Quietly in the background waits Father Ponikenus, _Magia Posthuma_ (on reanimation of the dead) in hand, available when mundane procedures can't suffice.

It all sounds lively enough -- in outline perhaps it is -- but the execution falls flat. Nadasdy comes across as one of the more selfish and arrogant s.o.b.s hell (or whatever) has spawned. Angelique, the nominal protagonist, isn't much better; even before she encounters Nadasdy's influence, she's hasty, willful, stubborn; while she is not utterly lacking in virtues, the longer the novel goes on, the easier it is to ignore them. Gil, the cop with culture, has a better chance of saving his girl from the vampire than he has of saving a book with a cast of such unengaging principals.