Bane of Kings reviews Blood Oath, a novel in The President’s Vampire series, written by Christopher Farnsworth and published by Jove Publishers.

“Forget Twilight. This is how Vampires are meant to be portrayed.” ~The Founding Fields

Minor Spoiler Alert for the Following Review!

As soon as I saw the cover, I knew I had to buy this novel. Although having never brought a Presidential thriller at all, I just had to buy this book, for several reasons. After seeing the blurb, the vampires in this novel would be portrayed as better than they previously have been in the past by other authors, and it just seemed too awesome not to buy.

I mean you can read about Presidents and Vampires separately, right? But Presidents and Vampires together? Now that’s something I haven’t seen done very much. In fact, before this, I hadn’t seen them combined together at all.

The pace is pretty fast, making you turn the pages as quickly as possible as you are thrown from scene to scene as you want to find out what happens next. Although the villains, a former Nazi scientist who had discovered the ‘elixir of life’ among them are several, they are somewhat predictable. But that doesn’t make the story seem less enjoyable, oh no.

The plot of Blood Oath is pretty straightforward. Sharp and ambitious, Zach Barrows is on his way up and manages to get a call from the White House. However, it’s not exactly the promotion that he expected; as Zach soon finds himself paired up with America’s best kept secret, and is assigned to be his political liaison officer.

And that secret takes the form of Nathaniel Cade, a Vampire living (or rather, unliving, if you will) in service to the US government since spared from death by President Andrew Johnson, and is seemingly the world’s only hope against a horrifying terrorist threat.

The themes portrayed in this novel take up the guise of several. Self-Control and Sacrifice is the first; in which Cade, who is unique in vampire society by refusing, in spite of having a tremendous desire to, drink human blood. This is mainly due to the upsetting events that surrounding his alteration from human to a creature of the night.

Another main theme that this novel gets across is Fear, or in this case, Fear of the Unknown. This novel puts the War of Terror up a notch, adding vampires and zombies to the mix, increasing the tension and making the conclusion ever more dramatic.

One more theme that is evident throughout this novel is Religion, as Cade struggles with his damnation to protect, rather than fight humanity. Another part in this theme is that Cade is objective to those around him who use The Lord’s name in vain, and even goes as far as to carry a damaged cross around his neck.

Blood Oath was one of those novels out there that will either be a hit or a miss for you, meaning that you’ll either like it or you don’t. I found myself in the first camp, as I utterly enjoyed the page-turning, jaw-dropping read that seemed surprisingly realistic, especially for a novel where you have Vampires as the good guys.

I hate to refer back to Twilight again, but I’m using this as an example, mainly because it’s the most predominate of its genre, but in Twilight, and I’m certain in several other books, Vampires generally tend to fall in love with humans. However, not in this book though, and even though the question does arrive (spoken by Zach), Cade has a perfect answer for it.

“Humans are our food. Do you want to have sex with a cow?”

 “Touché…”

 Moving on, if you’re into this sort of stuff (and I don’t mean about having sex with cows, but the Vampires and the Political Thriller aspects), then this book will certainly be the book for you. An awesome read in my opinion, and I am very glad when I found out that Blood Oath is the first part in a trilogy, with the next novel: The President’s Vampire, having recently come out. I’ll defiantly pick that up when I can.

Rating: 4/5

 More Presidents’ Vampire: Blood Oath, The President’s Vampire