The tagline: A plague is coming…
The story: Fear grips London as dozens of clubbers die after taking a sinister new drug, but that’s only the beginning. Hours later, the dead clubbers wake-up – and it’s open season on the living, who are butchered for their blood. Soon London gives a name to its terror: Vampires . . .
Jake Lawton, bitter and betrayed after the Iraq War, finds himself fighting another battle – against the growing army of immortal hunters and their human cohorts. But the vampire plague unleashed on London is nothing to what lurks beneath the streets – Waiting to be fed . . . Waiting to be resurrected . . . Waiting to reign again over a city of human slaves.
The critics: Twilight it most certainly ain’t Scott Pack
First of a trilogy set in London, this very exciting novel involves a disillusioned Iraq War veteran, an illegal drug with horrific side effects, and an ancient society hidden away for centuries but now planning a major resurgence. Jake Lawton, a former military man, is working as a bouncer at a nightclub when several people die after taking a new recreational drug. Later, the dead begin to rise and feed off the living, and Jake realizes that the city—and, by extension, the world—could be wiped out by a plague of vampires. Fast paced, with sharply defined characters and a very clever historical explanation for the modern-day vampires (it involves ancient Babylon and Alexander the Great), the book should find a large audience. It’s worth pointing out that this is no “vampire romance”; it’s an out-and-out horror story, dark and brutal and thrilling. David Pitt, Booklist
Emson feeds fresh blood to the vampire genre in this visceral hybrid of plague, panic, and the paranormal, which launches a series worth watching… Furious pacing doesn’t preclude harsh poetic imagery as human greed blurs lines between friend and foe, victim and victimizer. Lawton’s personal crises enrich the splattery carnage, and the plot is lent pathos by a misguided human population as dismal as the undead. The vampires of this energetic and philosophical fable are the rotting, deadly creatures of folklore, and a refreshing change for readers who weary of the sexy undead. Publishers Weekly