The Awakening (Vampire Huntress Legend Series #2)

by L. A. Banks

Overview

The second book in L. A. Banks's thrilling Vampire Huntress series featuring Damali Richards, a young African American woman who is all that stands between us and the enternal night.

There is a vampire war brewing in the underworld and at the center of it all is Damali Richards, spoken word artist and Vampire Huntress. But she is not just any Vampire Huntress, she is the millenium Neteru. A woman so potentially powerful that the vampire world is about to invoke a bloody battle that threatens to spill over onto her streets in order to posses her.

It's just a matter of who will get to her first.

Fallon Nuit, a rogue vampire, is one of the most powerful Damali has ever encountered and he has allied himself with the deadly Amanrath demons in order to claim her. But the Vampire Council has plans for her as well. And now an unlikely variable has entered into the equation, an ex-lover now turned vampire with an agenda of his own. And Damali must risk trusting him once more if they are to survive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312316839
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/21/2004
Series:	Vampire Huntress Legend Series , #2
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.61(d)

About the Author

L. A. BANKS was the author of the Vampire Huntress Legend series and the Crimson Moon Novels, including Left for Undead and Never Cry Werewolf. She had a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and a master's in fine arts from Temple University. Banks considered herself a shape-shifter, writing romance, women's fiction, crime and suspense, and of course, dark vampire huntress lore. She lived with her daughter in Philadelphia until her death in 2011.

Editorial Reviews

With The Awakening, Banks solidifies her intriguing, dark series as a project worth watching.” —Booklist

“Again, Banks brilliantly combines spirituality, vampires, and demons (and hip hop music) into a fast-paced tale that is sure to leave fans of her first novel, Minion, panting for more but nothing seems quite as hot as the steamy, often tense relationship between Damali and Carlos...a newcomer to the vampire genre...[Banks] lends a fresh and contemporary voice.” —Columbus Dispatch

“[Banks is] wildly creative and invents a totally new and refreshing milieu.” —Fangoria

From the Publisher

Second and shorter trade paperback entry in the Afro Vampire Huntress rock 'n' roll trilogy rip-off of Blade, Buffy, and Lestat, following Minion (2003). At 20, destiny-driven Damali Richards, a New Orleans orphan and now a Spoken Word artiste, nears full awakening of her superpowers as an adult vampire huntress as she runs about carrying rhino bullets fresh-packed with hallowed earth and holy water grenades that blast like C-4-which has got master vampire Fallon Nuit and the Vampire High Council in a major tizzy. Unhappily for Damali, her sometime lover Carlos Rivera got turned and is dead, man, or rather undead, and time's gotta come when Damali or one of her devamper Warriors of Light stakes him out so that he gets real cool, real dead. It's war, with Fallon Nuit's demonic Minion of rogue hybrid-vampires against Damali, who's protected by seven guardians, including band members who double on drums and crossbow, or computer-crossbow-wooden stake, or as Aikido instructor/choreographer/bassist. As Carlos is led through a many-layered hell of demons, each layer as richly defined as Dante's Inferno, his bloodthirst rises, and, back on earth, he nearly attacks his mother, his grandmother, and their young helper Juanita before he's interrupted. Meanwhile, the Council demands that Carlos bring in Damali in three days, when she ovulates, so their seed will ripen in her before her birthday. Technically, Carlos, who died in prayer, is not dead, only transformed, and thus untrustworthy for this job. Will he sign the eternal contract and deposit his soul with the Council? Will Nuit's plan for armies of hybrid demons to turn hundreds of thousands of Damali's concertgoers on five continents besuccessful? Will vamps get viral immunity to sunlight and become daywalkers? Strong improvement for Banks, who found herself attacked by Internet fans of Laurel K. Hamilton, Anita Blake, and Buffy's Joss Whedon, vampiricists who make no reflections in mirrors.

Kirkus Reviews