Title: Of Saints and Shadows
Author: Christopher Golden
Series: The Shadow Saga
Number: One of seven
What It’s About:
Private eye (and vampire) Peter Octavian is drawn into the search for an ancient book known as The Gospel of Shadows as the Defiant Ones (vampires) clash with a secret sect of the Catholic Church hellbent on ridding the earth of the vampiric plague.
Why I Like It and You Should Read It:
As bestseller Jonathan Maberry notes in his cover blurb for the latest edition, “Christopher Golden was writing kick-ass urban fantasy before the genre even had a name” and I’m 100% in agreement with this (never mind the fact that it is true!)
I read the first edition of this book back in 1994 when it was originally published by Ace. (For comparison purposes, Storm Front, the first book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, wasn’t published until 2000.) I fell in love with the character of Peter Octavian, a vampire who had sword off the “blood song” and now worked as a private investigator, hiding in plain sight.
You’ll recognize many of what have become standard urban fantasy tropes in this book, namely because it was Golden who had a hand in making them tropes in the first place. Don’t let that dissuade you, however. Chris’ plotting is always tight and always surprising, tropes or not. And he has a way of getting inside his character’s heads and making them come alive, so much so that if you turned a corner and found them standing in the street you wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.
Chris happens to be one of the hardest working genre writers I know, with well over fifty traditionally published titles, never mind his work in video games and comics. He has written for major franchises like Hellboy, Baltimore, Buffy, Angel, Daredevil, King Kong, Uncharted, Sons of Anarchy, Alien, and Predator. I had the pleasure of meeting him early in my career and have always found him to be gratuitous and kind, never mind an all-around good guy.
Of Saints and Shadows, along with the other books in the Shadow Saga, helped set the stage for urban fantasy as a genre and is well worth your time not only to read, but to study as well.
Available in both ebook and print in gorgeous new, updated editions from Journalstone Publishing.
Find it at Amazon.