Blood Reunion by JCM Berne

Blurb:

People are dying, their corpses left savaged and drained of blood. The obvious culprit: vampires. But vampires shouldn’t be able to sneak around Wistful undetected or shadowstep freely inside her body. Soon the station herself becomes oddly uncooperative, leaving Rohan and Wei Li bewildered and all her inhabitants in danger.

Finding and defeating the killer will require a deep dive into the ancient history of Wistful and of the il’Drach people. Into the connections between the Ursans, the wormholes, and the races that preceded them. Into the dark past of a tormented space station that yearns only for death.

Rohan will be forced to fight, and maybe even to kill. He’ll have to face those who bear grudges from his past, the Empire he once served, and his own reluctance to again become the warrior he sometimes needs to be.

Review:

How do you follow up a superhero story tackling world-threatening giant shark kaiju? A close-quarters thriller with vampires?

Eff it, let’s roll.

With the third turn of the Hybrid Helix—Blood Reunion—JCM Berne continues to expand on his gripping sci-fi universe where vampires now meld seamlessly with talking bears and sentient starships. A tall order on paper for any author, but in Berne’s hands, it makes for another thrilling turn in this sci-fi superhero epic.

After returning to his guise as the Griffin and saving the Earth from megaton sharks, Rohan is happy to be back home aboard Wistful. But when corpses are discovered drained of blood, the obvious culprit is a vampire. But though the culprit is obvious, the solution is far less so. Torn between wanting not to take on the mantle of the il’Drach weapon he once was and protecting all those he holds dear from a powerful supernatural threat, Rohan must uncover a dark past and unearth old grudges if he stands a chance at stopping the hands of death from taking hold once again.

I’ve said it before in speaking on the first two books of the series, but Rohan is an absolute star of a character, one of the most memorable I’ve read in recent memory. Each book has peeled back another layer of this outwardly quippy and inwardly conflicted hero, and Blood Reunion is no exception. Rohan has long wished not to be the killing machine he once was in service to the il’Drach Empire, and this book perfectly explores the psyche of one who cannot bear to use his Powers to kill again, even if it is so others may live. Not only does Berne delve into this conflict in exploring how best to tackle a vampiric threat, but we also learn of those who were affected personally by the Empire—whether directly or indirectly by Rohan. An additional wrinkle is thrown in with Rohan’s complicated family dynamic, where we are introduced to his father and all the baggage that comes with that previously unseen link to the il’Drach Empire. Great stuff all around.

The supporting cast is wonderful again, and after being away from the Wistful crew in Return of the Griffin, it was a treat to see the likes of Wei Li, Ursula, and the sentient Wistful once again. The new arrivals add more layers to the vast galaxy Berne is exploring, from the order of vampires who abstain from drinking blood to the exiled physician whose life was uprooted by the Empire to the space station driven to madness and wishing for death. On paper, the Hybrid Helix, as a whole, can feel like a “spaghetti-on-the-wall” approach with the different races present, but it’s to Berne’s credit that every inclusion here feels natural and authentic to the world he’s created. I’ll admit to some apprehension that Blood Reunion would be a vampire story, but those concerns were unwarranted—it all fits in perfectly.

After all the bombast of the previous book, it was nice to have such a constrained narrative in Blood Reunion. The threat of the looming vampire is palpable throughout the book, and returning the danger to the close confines of Wistful helped elevate the tension than would a planet- or galaxy-spanning threat. This story is a page-turner from front to back, with all the high action, witty dialogue, big twists, and wonderfully deep lore that I’ve come to expect from this series. If there is one misstep along the way, it would be the same misstep I found glaring in the previous books: the in medias res prologues, which once again feels a bit disjointed from the rest of the book, especially given the story’s events don’t catch up to it until the final chapters. Maybe it’s more a preference thing on my end, but it’s overall a very minor issue that doesn’t detract from the book.

There’s a lot to love in Blood Reunion, and a lot to love with the Hybrid Helix series as a whole. JCM Berne has crafted a hell of an epic, and I’m eager to see what wild adventures Rohan will get into next.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to wean myself off of blood, so I’m gonna go drink some red Kool-aid.