The Gray Man of Smoke and Shadow - Book 2 in Todd Sullivan's Vampire Series
Last year I read Butchers by Todd Sullivan and though I loved the book, one of the things I said I wish I had, was more of the incredible vampire world that Sullivan created. What I didn’t know at the time I wrote the review was that there was more coming from Sullivan in that same world. The Gray Man of Smoke and Shadows is the second book in Sullivan’s vampire series set in South Korea. Both books are very good and full of action, but that, and the fact that they share the same world, is all that they have in common.
While Butchers puts the reader in the middle of a world where vampires walk among regular humans, pretending to be human most of the time, it also provides a lot of background about the organization that polices the vampires. This is why the book, while short, helps the reader understand the big ideas going forward. The Gray Man of Smoke and Shadows is different from its predecessor in that it is a much more personal story. Both books have a tremendous amount of action, but Gray Man brings the characterization to a whole new level. we already know the main character from the first installment, but now Hyeri is going after her uncle and will stop at nothing to see him dead.
This is a story of revenge. It’s a personal story and it hits makes an indelible mark the way the first book in the series could not do because it was laying the framework in a way this book did not have to do.
The book sells itself as a series of “extreme horror” and while the story does have the extreme violence that puts it in that category, it is so much more than that. Sullivan is at his best, not when writing the extreme violence contain within his stories, but when he is developing characters and making you think what they think, and feel what they feel. That is his real strength and what makes this book such a good read. As I said, Gray Man and Butchers are very different books. But it is impossible to read each and not compare them to each other. I enjoyed Butchers a bit more than Gray Man, but they are both very good and worth the read. The Gray Man of Smoke and Shadows a solid 4/5.
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