“The God of Endings” introduces a new twist on vampire stories ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

A strong first novel is always an interesting reading experience, and The God of Endings, by first-time novelist Jacqueline Holland, left me thinking for a good long while after I turned the last page.

I thought about the scope of the story I had just read, about all that it had encompassed and the unique take on blood-drinking immortal beings that the author had devised; I also thought about what I felt was missing from the book as it is, places where I was left craving a bit more background, more detail.

(Not that that’s a bad thing – a sense of completeness and finality when you finish a good book can be a good thing, but so can a sense of mystery or longing. The little frisson of excitement that traces up your spine when you finish a book that leaves you wanting more is a tantalizing sensation.)

It has in common with many novels of the genre a protagonist who is introduced into the eternal life unwillingly and who is forced to navigate their way through this strange new world with little or no guidance.

Colette LaStange, neé Anna, neé Anya, is turned in the rural eastern United States in the 1830s. The story follows her, through alternating flashbacks to the past and returns to the “present time” of the story, from her sleepy American village to the deep forests of mysterious 19th-Century Eastern Europe, to France, and finally to rural New York state (or perhaps Connecticut) in 1984, where/when she runs a preschool arts academy out of a rambling country farmhouse. Her life is comfortable, though subtly underscored by the necessary tension of dealing with the reality of her immortal condition in a world of mortal humans, until she accepts into the school a child whose home life and recent past put her on a collision course with an unforeseen reality of her condition.

Written in lush, slowly paced prose that will require a change to a lower gear if you are accustomed to faster-paced, more energetic reading, The God of Endings walks the reader through a world in which the rules governing the existence—and obligations—of immortal blood-drinkers are much different from any that have been dreamed up by previous writers in the genre.

I enjoyed the time I spent in the world that Ms. Holland creates in her story, though I did find myself wondering about the time line of a portion of the narrative when she is on her own in Europe. Regardless of that niggling observation, The God of Endings is a thought-provoking read that will have you pondering the conventional approaches to vampire fiction, and perhaps hoping for more from this author in this unconventional vein.