I loved this book so much that I read it twice within three weeks of getting it. The story is about a Chicago vampire who wakes out of his daytime nap to discover that the entire world has gone up in a nuclear holocaust. The story then follows him as he comes across small pockets of surviving humanity that he comes to realize he must not destroy if he himself is to survive.

Tilton makes sure to paint him in as unflattering light as possible, no sparkly vampire for her. He's a cold-blooded killer who has munched on a human for dinner every night of his long existence, which by my calculation added up to him killing almost 60,000 people in his long vampiry life. That being said, by the time the book was through, I not only felt sympathy and pity for him, I actually really liked his character.

His trek through the American midwest during the nuclear winter that follows the bombs dropping causes him to interact with humans in a way that he's never had to before, and it changes him, but Tilton never soft sells his dark side, and the fact that he will never be free of his vampire nature. This book, and her other vampire book, Darkness on the Ice, are the two vampire books that made me truly feel the "otherness" of vampires. A really, really good book. ( )