Welcome back to StarWarp Spotlight, a series of posts that runs each Monday to shine a spotlight on one of our titles, as a reminder of the awesome books and comics we publish and to introduce new SWC fans to our backlist.
This week, we look at the sequel to our most popular young adult title…
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 is a dark-urban-fantasy novel by Steven A. Roman (that’s me!) about a 16-year-old Goth girl from Queens, NY, who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she thinks she can see monsters. It was only after she met an immortal, shape-shifting monster hunter named Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin in the first novel, Blood Feud, that Pan discovered she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see past the human disguises worn by the inhabitants of Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world of actual monsters that exists right alongside the human world.
It was right after that revelation that Pan, her parents and friends, and Annie were drawn into a conflict among warring vampire clans searching for the key to an ultimate weapon—and then all hell broke loose! The action led directly into Blood Reign:
She was stabbed in the heart with an ancient mystical spear. Her mother was kidnapped by a band of vampires led by a fallen angel—their goal: unleashing hell on earth. And every living creature on the planet faces extinction at the hands of a race of biblical monsters. But for Pandora Zwieback, the worst may be yet to come.
In this terrifying next chapter of the story begun in the critically acclaimed novel Blood Feud, join the teenaged Goth adventuress as she discovers that death is only the beginning of her saga…
Like Blood Feud, it’s a character-driven story that balances the tribulations of a teenager just trying to make sense of her bizarre life with the fast-paced frenzy of an action-adventure movie loaded with monsters. Critics certainly enjoyed it:
“If the first volume took some deliberate pacing steps to build Pandora’s character, this volume eschews that as it thunders along at breakneck speed, barely pausing for breath at any given time (and, I must say, the volume was devoured at speed as well). The book doesn’t suffer for this…I thoroughly enjoyed this volume.”—Taliesin Meets the Vampires
“If you thought the first book, Blood Feud, was high powered, you’ll love this book! To paraphrase movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn’s quote: Blood Reign starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax…. This was one fun read!”—Dwight Jon Zimmerman, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Lincoln’s Last Days: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever
Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 is available in print and digital formats, so visit its product page for ordering information.
