Nina’s twin sister Sher has been groomed to be an Inherited Servant since she was six years old. At twenty-eight, she will be given to a vampire of the Council’s choosing and serve him up to 300 years. While Sher insists that Nina is no less service-oriented than herself, Nina does not see any correlation between her own desire to pursue a career as a nurse and her sister’s to be the slave of a … a blue-blooded vampire, where she is allowed no will or dreams of her own.It’s 1941 and Nina signs up to serve with the Australian Army Nurses Service in Singapore. What happens to her when the city falls to the Japanese will shatter Nina all the way to the soul. But fate seems determined to give her more than she can bear. When her sister dies in a car crash, Nina is informed that she must take her place as an InhServ. She will be given to Lord Alistair, a vampire who sees Nina as his property, to do with as he pleases.Even as she rages against her fate, she is baffled at Alistair’s insistence on having her as his servant. Especially when the Council offers the Queensland Region Master the option of another InhServ with all the proper training to support his political needs. But that’s not the most confusing thing about her new Master. The ways in which he commands her surrender to him leads her to a terrifyingly different understanding of her will and her dreams. By binding herself to him, can she become whole again, but in a way she never expected?
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When ever I pick up a book by Joey W Hill, I know I am in for an absolute treat. Her books are suffused with an understanding and love of humanity, but do not flinch from revealing our uglier side and experiences. In Vampire’s Embrace we are shown the abject horror of war and its long term effects on both the psyche, the body, heart and soul.
In Alistair and Nina’s story we see that nobility of heart and purpose that are characteristic of so many if Joey’s creations and I love her for it as, through them and her sensitive, perceptive writing, she always succeeds in lifting my spirits. This is a book which draws on the world of man and the potentially treacherous vampire world of her creation. Yet another book to which I will return in order to immerse myself in Joey’s world.
This is a fabulous book. Joey has never disappoints you. Nina and Alistair is a great couple. They have lots of story so please read this book. You will love it.
I finished my first read through VAMPIRE’S EMBRACE the week it released…which means I’ve been reading and re-reading it for almost six weeks now…it’s that good. Every time I think I can put it in with all of the other Vampire Queen books, I remember a scene that I really have to read again, and…well, it stays out on my desk because I’m not ready to part with it!
Stories by Joey W Hill are akin to an art form. She creates fully formed characters with all the flaws and insecurities of real people, and yet allows each of her leads to find meaning within their relationship that resonates with the reader as the only truth that could possibly work. And work it does in VAMPIRE’S EMBRACE.
Nina is serving with the Australian Army Nursing Service in Singapore in 1941, when a chance encounter with a vampire changes her life in ways she never imagined. She knows what Alistair is from the beginning—her family is one dedicated to the vampire race, promising to send their first born child into the Inherited Servant program at a young age. Nina’s twin sister—only minutes older—is an InhServ, well into her training, and Alistair is the vampire she is fated to serve. But this is Singapore, just before the city falls to the Japanese, and Alistair is in need of blood. He’s been heroically rescuing soldiers wounded in battle when Nina offers him her wrist.
After he feeds, Alistair heads back into the battle. Already shaken by the intimate experience of feeding a vampire, Nina’s life is forever changed when the city is overtaken by the Japanese and so many of her fellow nurses and their wounded patients are killed. With Alistair’s help, Nina survives, yet once again they part. Three years later, Nina is trying to make sense out of her life, the fact she has survived when so many died, when her sister is killed in a car accident. But the family still owes a child to fulfill their centuries old contract with the vampires, and Alistair is demanding Nina.
Nina’s struggles as she fights what she is being forced into, a life she views as slavery, is a story that kept me mesmerized throughout the book. Totally unprepared for the life of a third marked servant to a “made” vampire region master, Nina fights against her fate while feeling drawn to the man who essentially owns her. She’s smart and independent, but accepting her submissive nature is a struggle she doesn’t know how to win. Alistair, a made vampire rather than one born of Vampire parents, fights his own battles as he is forced to prove himself among the cadre of those born to the blood. The convoluted feelings that both Nina and Alistair have to deal with reminded me of adversaries in a fencing match: feint and parry, thrust and withdraw, it becomes a dance between two people who feel more than they want to and yet can’t quite reconcile those feelings.
I’ve loved every single one of the books in this series, but this one has kept me involved longer than any of the others. I keep rereading parts for the sheer beauty of the prose and the way the author takes her characters through their many steps within the story. Joey W Hill’s writing is always something to savor, but this particular book is definitely one I will be rereading again and again.
I’m sorry there are only five stars to give!
To call Alistair, Vampire, and his reluctant servant Nina a conventional pairing in the complex world of Vampire politics would be a blatant understatement.
Both disillusioned and deeply torn by their war experiences they have a desperate desire for a connection that is not only frowned upon, but dangerous in their world.
Ms Hill weaves actual events and a fictional story into a heart wrenching, exhilarating, sensual masterpiece.
This book left me crying, cursing, flinging pillows, fascinated, glad and sorry that it ended