Book one of this series spent a lot of time in split narratives (and narrative perspectives), mostly through dramatic irony and flashback. We were getting both Jessica and David, David knowing everything about Jessica, and Jessica knowing almost nothing about David. We also got a lot about David’s past through flashback.
For this novel, a few years past the first, we have a much wider range of characters, landscapes and even mini-genre styles. At times this still reads like an Anne Rice vampire novel, but we even get a minor Michael Crichton novel shoved in there. The scope and action have widened, and we learn a whole lot more about the colony of eternals.
So our plot for this one: it’s been a few years since the end of the first book and Jessica and her sister’s clinic in Botswana has gained an uncomfortable amount of fame, and attracting notice from around the world. Jessica also notices that her daughter is saying odd things about people she’s never met and exhibiting powers not otherwise known about her “living blood”. She realizes that she needs to find the colony and get some answers ( and possibly join). While this is happening a famous alternative medicine scientist hears about the clinic and wants to find it, not for research but because his teenage son is dying from leukemia, exactly the kind of condition the blood has been used to cure. While THIS is happening rich Americans are also seeking out the blood in order to have an elixir and are willing to use whatever means necessary to get it. While THIS THIS is happening, the colony is plugging along awaiting their new arrivals.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41538.The_Living_Blood)
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