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| rhetoriccamel.blogspot.com |
"He's one of them, isn't he?"
"And you allowed him to blood you?!"
..."Right, I would have thought of that myself, except, you see, the blood loss must have really addled my brain, because try as I might, I just can't remember how it's supposed to be done. It's even possible that I was absent on the day they covered that particular topic."
"You really don't know?"
"Look, Viara, I'm not the type who would expect a girl to fight his battles for him, but I wouldn't mind if you gave me a few pointers here."
"Brean, I wish I could, but I'm not a defender. My family and I, we're guardians, and as far as I understand it, the only abilities I inherited are a heightened sense of awareness, and the power to temporarily conceal things."
"Hey, don't worry about it, I'll just Google Peace, and print out the proper procedure."
"You can't. I mean...you probably won't find anything useful on the Net. PEACE has inquisitors who dedicate their entire existence to screening public information. Anything even remotely revealing gets immediately altered, or removed."
..."And what if this birthmark is just a birthmark."
"No, Brean, I don't think so. You probably just have to...train yourself...like these guys on your walls. Maybe reread some of your favorite issues. It might trigger something..."
~~~
Angel's Breath
By Yvonne Voninnes
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| "The gray-haired maintenance man briefly eyed the young professor's oversized wristwatch. "no wonder," he commented in a friendly banter, "It looks like a relic." "That it does," the professor agreed, lifting his right arm to look fondly upon his outdated timepiece. He noticed that his cuff had retracted far enough to reveal one of the deep claw trails he had suffered in the previous night's conflict. Agitated by the ugly intrusion, he quickly shook the material loose. ~~~ |
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| "Good morning," he said to her. "We'll get started in just a few minutes." He left the lectern, and walked back up the aisle, to greet the rest of his students with a courteous nod. They were, he noted, each of them, human. He hadn't expected otherwise, but the confirmation allowed him to full submit himself to his fictitious role..." ~~~ |
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| English: A screenshot from Dracula Italiano: Wikipedia) |
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| "Brean had always been intrigued with Laugomente Fiore's penchant for incorporating miniature scenes throughout his libraries, especially in locations that were practically hidden from plain view. The sculptures were painstakingly intricate, and seemed to pay homage to popular folklore. Since they didn't appear to be placed sequentially, historians generally assumed that each carving stood on its own, embodying a specific tale, a seemingly befitting a decor for a storage house of literature. Past their visual appeal, they were hardly worthy of an in-depth analysis. ~~~ |
BTW, I couldn't find the Italian architect on the Internet--so don't bother...LOL To me the significant thing about this is that the author obviously has significant experience and training so that her novel comes across as a credible, almost documented, historically based novel... Very well done in this area...
I was not as impressed with the later categorization and groupings for the supernatural beings in the book. They were vague and didn't provide the strong knowledge base that had come through earlier. My own reading of the entire Guardian Series by Ruby Moon-Houldson may have influenced what I expected.. Especially, since different writers user words like guardian to mean different things in different books. So if the author doesn't clarify this, readers are left confused... Still, for a first novel, there was a sufficiently interesting story line to keep the novel moving forward to a satisfactory conclusion, albeit, with some confusion if you're really into the story...
One of the ways this lack of information comes about is that Brean, the character, has absolutely no background knowledge that he is anything more than human.
The professor--now going by the name Claremont Drake has Brean in his class. Brean notices how badly one of the students is being treated and takes subtle actions to draw him out, not knowing that the boy is actually not only helping the professor as a teaching assistant, but...so much more... But then the boy disappears and Brean is chosen, on purpose, to become the new TA... One cool outcome of that is that the Professor shares letters from the Architect Fiore--while the other actions by the professor were...not...cool!
At the same time, he also sees and becomes interested in Viara, who has known about her life and her own required commitments, which she has been putting off. She had always had questions that just weren't being answered to her satisfaction...And readers don't learn too much as well...
But she does know enough to realize what the "birthmark" on Brean's arm means!
I enjoyed the developing relationship between these two young people and readers will too, I believe!
This writer has a lot to offer, especially if she either writes on topics she knows, or does more research to support and define the various character roles or organizations she uses, such as PEACE, for the readers. I personally didn't discover the illusion to angel's breath in the novel except as a voice in Brean's head without knowing who Brean himself was. Still, I found the evolution and relationships of the professor, Brean and one other character, a doctor, together with Viara, to be an intriguing and complex story worthy of consideration by both YAs and adults...
GABixlerReviews
Yvonne Vonninnes states of her book, Angel’s Breath is a contemporary vampire fiction in which the supernatural is symbolic of the human struggle to persevere over handicaps, addictions, and self-centeredness.
