The Priest of Blood (Vampyricon Series #1) by Douglas Clegg

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Douglas Clegg's The Priest of Blood, the first installment in his much-anticipated Vampyricon saga, is an intense and grisly dark fantasy, set in the 12th century, that rivals Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain sequence in both sheer narrative scope and unbridled, violent eroticism.

Aleric Atheffelde is the son of an impoverished woman who was forced to prostitute herself to feed her children. His life in the woodlands of medieval Brittany is changed forever when he is hired on by a local baron to serve the hunt and train falcons. His talent with birds of prey offers Aleric a respite from the destitution and brutality around him -- that is, until his mother is arrested and executed for consorting with the Devil. Exiled to the Holy Land to fight -- and die -- in the wars, Aleric finds himself in a distant outpost face-to-face with a beautiful, demonic seductress who becomes his mother, his lover, his savior, and his murderer. When Aleric rises from his grave as one of the blood-drinking undead, he awakens into a shadowy realm of nightmarish legend: a world where he could be the prophesied messiah destined to return dominion to those of his kind…

Since the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1897, the vampire theme has been extensively explored and revised in literally thousands of short stories and novels; but in The Priest of Blood, Clegg completely reconstructs the legend of vampires from the ground up, creating a complex, ancient history with its own arcane and sadistic mythos. If The Priest of Blood is any indication, Clegg's Vampyricon saga will be a blood-sucking masterpiece of truly epic proportions: Two fangs up! Paul Goat Allen

From the Publisher

From Douglas Clegg, award-winning author of Afterlife and The Hour Before Dark, comes his first-ever fantasy novel, dealing with the dark edge of a fantastic medieval world. The Priest of Blood is the first novel of The Vampyricon, a saga of sword and sorcery -- and vampyres.

Born the son of a woman thought to be a witch, Aleric does not know who fathered him. From his grandfather he learned the skill that will change his life. With that training -- and his own ability to communicate with the great predator birds of the forest -- Aleric is taken into service by the Baron and put in charge of his falcons.

Now called Falconer, he rises fast and far. Still, to those at court, he remains the bastard son of a peasant whore. And when his forbidden love for the Baron's daughter is discovered, his punishment is swift and severe. Beaten and brutalized, he is forcibly conscripted as a soldier and banished to the Holy Land to fight the Saracen infidels. Amidst the horror and chaos of the ongoing struggle, he becomes a mighty warrior -- and a man without faith or conscience.

Then, in an ancient ruined city, he finds a new love. She calls herself Pythia -- and in her passionate, bloody embrace, he also finds his destiny...

Set in a medieval world of ancient forests and buried kingdoms, of gods and monsters, of love that crosses centuries, and vengeance beyond lifetimes, The Priest of Blood is the tale of Aleric, Falconer, of his quest for his beloved, and for the legendary priest-king within whose tomb the secrets of the ancient, immortal race of vampyres reside.

Publishers Weekly

The stunning first volume of a new dark fantasy epic from Stoker-winner Clegg (Nightmare House) gives the iconic vampire a massive makeover and draws fresh possibilities from its most familiar aspects. Aleric Atheffelde, a low-born medieval Breton boy with a strange knack for training birds, gets snared while serving as an unwilling soldier in the Holy Land by arch-vampiress Pythia, who through a kiss inadvertently sparks a vision in him of his regal vampire destiny. From the moment of Aleric's conversion, the tale detours sharply from the well-plowed terrain of conventional vampire costume dramas into an undiscovered country entirely the author's own. Aleric and his new vampire tribe travel to the legendary vampire necropolis of Alkemara, a marvel of gothic creepiness. There they encounter the legendary Priest of Blood, who supplies an intricate and mesmerizing view of vampire culture and projects a tragic future whose outcome hinges on Aleric. This rich and symbol-laden blend of myth and history makes intense reading while it lays a solid foundation for later books in the series. Agent, Simon Lipskar at Writers House. (Oct.) **Starred Review**

Publishers Weekly

The stunning first volume of a new dark fantasy epic from Stoker-winner Clegg (Nightmare House) gives the iconic vampire a massive makeover and draws fresh possibilities from its most familiar aspects. Aleric Atheffelde, a low-born medieval Breton boy with a strange knack for training birds, gets snared while serving as an unwilling soldier in the Holy Land by arch-vampiress Pythia, who through a kiss inadvertently sparks a vision in him of his regal vampire destiny. From the moment of Aleric's conversion, the tale detours sharply from the well-plowed terrain of conventional vampire costume dramas into an undiscovered country entirely the author's own. Aleric and his new vampire tribe travel to the legendary vampire necropolis of Alkemara, a marvel of gothic creepiness. There they encounter the legendary Priest of Blood, who supplies an intricate and mesmerizing view of vampire culture and projects a tragic future whose outcome hinges on Aleric. This rich and symbol-laden blend of myth and history makes intense reading while it lays a solid foundation for later books in the series. Agent, Simon Lipskar at Writers House. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Born a bastard child of an unknown father, Aleric finds a place as the Baron's falconer owing to his uncanny ability to communicate with birds of prey. When a forbidden love comes to light, Aleric is forced to join a Crusade to the Holy Land. There he meets the woman known as Pythia, whose fatal kiss curses him with the thirst for blood and sets him on the road to destiny. Clegg's series opener features a vampiric hero whose beginnings in the Middle Ages marks him as a warrior. Action and adventure combine with traditional vampire fiction to create a book that will appeal to fans of vampires and historical fantasy. For most libraries. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The opening of a historical fantasy series with a vampire as protagonist. Clegg (The Machinery of Knight, 2005, etc.) begins his story in the era of the Crusades; the opening chapters take place in Brittany, the protagonist's birthplace. The bastard son of a peasant woman who ekes out a living as a prostitute, Aleric grows up in the forest, tutored by his grandfather to know the ways of birds. This skill gains him a place in the baron's entourage as a falconer-a title that replaces his given name. Life in the castle exposes Falconer to new dangers, including bullying from another young servant and harsh discipline from the huntsman, his immediate superior. But it is also a huge step up in the world, and allows him to give some measure of support to his mother and her ever-growing brood. Two events precipitate his fall from this state of relative prosperity: an affair with the baron's beautiful daughter, and the arrest of Falconer's mother for witchcraft. Attempting to parlay the daughter's favor into a pardon for his mother, Falconer oversteps and is sold into slavery as a foot soldier in the crusades. After many battles, he enters a ruined city inhabited by a vampire, and becomes one of the undead, at which point the real action begins. Clegg invests his vampires with a long mythological history, in which Falconer finds himself a central figure: the long-awaited messiah-like figure of the vampires. In fulfillment of the prophecies, Falconer and his vampire companions undertake an arduous (and suitably bloody) quest through a vividly drawn fantastic landscape. Meanwhile, back in Brittany, we learn that Falconer's beloved, now a nun, has been seduced into the service of the evil forcesagainst which Falconer and his vampires are aligned. The conclusion sets the stage for further struggles. Well-paced fantasy adventure, and not just for hardcore vampire fans.

What People Are Saying

Christopher Rice
Christopher Rice, New York Times–bestselling author of A Density of Souls and Light Before Day:
Astonishing. Douglas Clegg writes of...nightmares with such clarity and passion you don't end up reading his books; you end up drinking them in. The Priest of Blood is a bloody gem.

Product Details

• Interviews & Essays

Interviews & Essays

Paul Goat Allen: Doug, you're mainly regarded as a writer of modern horror and suspense thrillers, what was the motivation to write a historical vampire saga?

Douglas Clegg: History and mythology have always fascinated me since the time, at age 11, when I climbed up the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico and felt the power of an ancient world. I grew up reading world mythology, almost as a secret love. Then, in my 20s, I lived in France and slept for several nights in one of the oldest forests in western Europe -- in Brittany. This inspired The Priest of Blood, which I began writing several years later. Then I spent nearly a decade researching the medieval era, learning swordplay, reading accounts of the Crusades, really digging into the 12th and 13th centuries as a place of life -- and shadows. I wanted vampires who echo harpies and gorgons -- mythological creatures of beauty and terror -- and so it began. And I wanted to write about life in a way I hadn't been able to with contemporary fiction. I wanted to write a novel of spectacle and wonder and heroism and create battles on the page that would take a reader's breath away -- and a sense of the greatness of existence within the novel.

PGA: How is your Vampyricon saga different from other bestselling vampire series like Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Saint-Germain novels?

DC: I think Aleric, the Falconer, and the vampyres of the novel are very different in that they are a lost tribe of sorts, and of course my setting is not Paris or San Francisco or New Orleans, but a journey across the Continent -- from the ancient forest in Brittany to battles in the Holy Land -- and a quest into a buried kingdom where a vital secret of the source of all vampyrism lies. In some respects, the novel may have more in common with high fantasy or even [Elizabeth Kostova's] The Historian. Having said that, I've enjoyed Rice and Yarbro's fiction a great deal, and I can only hope that readers take to and love Aleric and his world as much as they've loved Rice and Yarbro.

PGA: I read on your web site that The Priest of Blood was a “personal story” for you. How so?

DC: The Priest of Blood came from three things -- first, my travels around the world, where I saw the intersection of an ancient, buried culture with the modern culture that had essentially buried it. At 11, it was in Mexico; at 16, I saw this in Spain; and then in my late teens, in Great Britain, and in my early 20s, in France and Germany. All my life, here in North America, as well. I responded on a very personal level to this -- and it also makes the world a bit of a treasure hunt. I'm an amateur mythologist and an enthusiast of archaeology and anthropology, so these loves came together in reinventing the medieval world and the cultures that contributed to it. Next, my parents both died within a year of each other, after illnesses that were devastating. This drove me into the world of The Vampyricon -- a world where life is both brutal and fantastic and where a hero could arise to combat shadows, even while existing in them. All my childhood loves came back to me after my mother and father died -- all the things I'd cherished: the storytelling; the world mythologies we discussed; the way my parents, taking us kids on travels or sending us on our own, opened my eyes to the greater world out there. Although I began writing this saga in the early 1990s, it would not have been finished if I didn't have those years when I wanted to escape into this other world -- the world of Alkemara and The Vampyricon. And finally, of course, that special time in my early 20s in that forest, which I call the Great Forest in The Priest of Blood.

PGA: What's next in the Vampyricon saga? And how many novels are you projecting this series to include?

DC: The next Vampyricon novel is tentatively titled Lady of Serpents and should be out in the fall of 2006. I really hate saying much about it because I'm still finishing it at the moment, and I tend to keep this stuff under wraps while I'm working on it. Right now, I know how the first three novels will mainly play out, and if I write the third and know the next one, the series will continue. I like to take the writing of a novel one at a time, because it means I pour everything I've got into it and really focus on its world. The world within The Priest of Blood is one of the richest I've ever created. I love living within it -- and I hope readers will as well.