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Innocent Blood by James Rollins & Rebecca Cantrell (The Order of the Sanguines #2)

Innocent Blood by James RollinsInnocent Blood is the second book in The Order Of The Sanguines series by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell.

If you’ve read any of the Sigma Force Series novels by James Rollins, you’ll discover just how different this series from his other one. Vastly different, even though some elements are contained in both, including lots of action, suspense and chilling terror at times.

The Order Of The Sanguines is a paranormal action thriller series, when vampires (strigoi), angels and demons are equally featuring along with fearless mortal human beings.

In the first book, the Gospel of Christ, the treasured book, has been found, but it takes three brave people, a Woman of Knowledge, a Knight of Christ, and The Warrior of Man, to stop the apocalypse, and finding the book was just the beginning.

We got to learn about the Sanguines, an order of vampires in Vatican who serve the church, refrain from drinking human blood and drink consacrated wine from the blood of Christ instead.

Innocent Blood continues where the first book left off. We meet our favorite characters again, the archaeologist Dr. Erin Granger, Cardinal Bernard, Father Rhun Kurza, the and Army Sergeant Jordan Stone, among others. Their quest to stop the apocalypse is ongoing, taking them on a journey from California, to  Italy, to Sweden, and finally to Egypt, where everything comes to an explosive conclusion.

Now that the Book was found, the next task is to find the First Angel, before the enemy can grab him. He is another piece of the puzzle, which should help save the world from the apocalypse. The Book has only empty pages, which will be only filled with writing once The First Angel will bless it, holding it in his hands.

While everything unfolds in little more than 2 days, the story is filled with non-stop action, just like we get to read in the first book, and just like we are already familiar with James Rollins’ other writings.

However here a new take on religion gets a strong lead. Several of the characters from the Bible feature in the book, and I felt a mix of emotions meeting them here, almost face to face. Judas, Rasputin, Lazarus, the Oracle and even Lucifer play important roles in the story that unfolds in front of our eyes.

The characters are complex, with a lot going on for them, and we get to know them quite indepth, with all the pain their chests have enclosed over the years, or centuries, or millenia. Many of these characters still have to find their roles in saving humanity from doom, and many learn that their roles are far different from what they thought it would be. Some turn from evil to do good through redemption, while others only get strengthened in their will to harm humanity forever.

I mentioned that the story covers only two days, but what epics those two days are! Non-stop action with so many things going on that you simply have to turn another page just to see what happens next. Loved every minute of it!

I do have one small nitpicking though. When Elisabeth met Rhun again, her first words to him were in Hungarian. Sadly the phrase was wrong, with the words put together like taken from a ‘tourist travel guide’. Not from someone who’s been speaking the language for Centuries. Just because Hungarian is not as popular as English, I would have expected from the authors to make their research a bit more careful, at least when they include a single phrase in Hungarian in the book (yes I am Hungarian by birth).

Overall Inncent Book was one heck of a ride. Not as much my style as the Sigma Force series (a bit too much biblical importance, wholly good vs ancient evil going on, more like the Da Vinci Code, but way more potent), but still a wonderful addition to the supernatural thriller genre. I already have the latest book in the series, Blood Infernal, in my library and will start to read it soon. And now that I’ve discovered Rebecca Cantrell, I am already hunting down her books, starting with her Joe Tesla series.


Innocent Blood by James Rollins & Rebecca Cantrell
Series: The Order of the Sanguines #2
Published by Harper&Collins
Published 2013
Genres: Thriller
Source: Purchased
Also by this author:  Ghost ShipThe Seventh PlagueThe Bone LabyrinthThe 6th ExtinctionTrackerThe Eye of God, The Demon Crown

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