Tynan wakes up from a century-old sleep to find the world he abandoned a technological, political nightmare. The Tyst Empire has seized tyrannical control of the world and are contested only by the nomadic rebel tribes of the Phuree. The Phuree oracle, Nahalo, has prophesized Tynan as the savior of those positioned against the Tyst Empire. The Tyst have a plan in the works to awaken a vampiric god to attain immortality, and it's going to take a powerful Immortal to stop them.

But things are turning out well for Tynan. He's awakened in a world he abandoned a hundred years ago, his intention to never awaken at all. His last great acts as a vampire were to turn his back on the vampire religion he created and the murder of another vampire in combat, which is strictly forbidden and frowned upon in vampiric culture. And in this new world he's awaken, Tynan's best friend of old, Seafra, is there to help him, but may not be as on the level as Tynan would like. What's a self-loathing vampire to do in a strange new world where friends are in short supply and it's impossible to know exactly who you can trust?

I wanted to like this book. I really, really wanted to like this book. But I couldn't. It's very beautifully, poetically written - think Richard Calder or William Gibson - where the imagery and description is thick enough to cut with a blade, and the effort the author put forth towards this book is apparent on every page. This is obviously Gabrielle Faust's labor of love, there's no other way to describe it. Even the cover art is awesome, and the intro by Michael Marano was a brilliant addition. It's a great package, very well put together, and the world would be a better place if all novels were presented like this.

But it's the actual content that let me down. Eternal Vigilance itself was, frankly, very boring. The protagonist is full of so much self-loathing and is so incessantly whiny, it's hard to care about him and except for a cybernetic sentinel outside the city in the early chapters, you get no real feel for this technologically advanced future the book heralds on its back cover. That was the big letdown for me; I was raised on sci-fi long before I got into horror, so the richer and more alien a futuristic vision, the better. Eternal Vigilance did not have that; Faust could have easily set the story present day with no major rewrites necessary.

Also, I like my vamps along the 30 Days of Night and Laymon's Bite: predatory, animalistic monsters, not romanticized nobles. It was that prim and proper depiction of the bloodsuckers in Eternal Vigilance that probably turned me off the most; but you Anne Rice fans out there will probably eat this up. Like I said though, not my forte. And if Faust paints a more vivid depiction of her future world in the subsequent books, I'll be more than willing to give the series another whirl but for now, Eternal Vigilance will be taking a long, dreamless nap on my bookshelf.
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Paperback: 240 pages
Publisher: Immanion Press (April 17, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1904853536
ISBN-13: 978-1904853534