Hm-m.. This is a difficult book to judge, and I'm not entirely comfortable with the whole synopsis being focused exclusively on Abby. There are four points of view, four stories in this book:

Abby - as a failed experiment of the Order, a vampire huntress with dark powers and a remarkable destiny;

Emily - her student, a young vampire huntress, whose life Abby saved and whom she continues to train;

Noel - Abby's husband and advisor;

Valerie - a clairvoyant of the Order.

The Order is a structure which trains vampire hunters since their birth. It's an old institute with a lot of obsolete views and as it often happens those views make the whole structure a failure. There are a lot of vampires in the world, and only few hunters at a time fighting them. Needless to say, the mortality rate is almost 100% and the Order numbers are dwindling.

There is a prophecy which says about a coming battle between a powerful demon Morphus, a servant of Greek goddess Erin and an ordained huntress, who represents goddess Athena (I hope I got the names right!)

Abby, a black sheep of the Order who left to never come back is that huntress and now she needs to deal with her past and find a way to win the battle to fulfill her destiny.

Neither Noel, who sounds like a wonderful and caring man nor Abby are happy to return, and they have to go through hostility, fear and curiosity of students and advisors with only two allies on their side - Emily and Valerie.

The book is full of dark secrets, Abby painful memories, her struggles, and battles with demons.

To be able to mark this book properly I have to split it in two parts: first 2/3 and the last third. I would say first part is 6/10 and the last is 8.5/10. It's the last part which makes you pick up the pace and which changes the book from average to remarkably good.

I absolutely loved the ending, and I'm very grateful to have the second book Metamorphosis at hand to find out what happens next. It was a deceptively addictive read.

My only problem is that I wanted to know more about the world, there was so much more to Abby and Noel's past, but the only world I saw was the one revolving around the Order's school grounds. ( )