One way to ensure a lively  novel is to pick two conflicting cultures and force them together. If you want to make it especially enthralling, have them manifest inside the same person. It turns out that vampirism and Judaism are a complete mismatch. It seems that the Jewish religion has all sorts of taboos about dead bodies: touching them, having them touch sacred objects, having them in consecrated spaces.

So you can see that being faithful to an orthodox Jewish sect might be a problem for one of the Undead. Especially a hundred years or more in the past, when people were less forgiving of small bends of the rules.

So, the novel is not so much about vampirism, but about beliefs and how people reconcile them. The real problem isn’t his being a vampire; it’s his insistence on being a proper Jew at the same time. There is perhaps an overemphasis on the various Jewish rituals, laid out in more loving detail than the average vampire fan wants.

The opening third of the book is marked by a careful orchestration of the emotional conflict to wring maximum sympathy from the reader, yet without seeming melodramatic. In the middle section the story rather drifts. There are a lot of important characters we need to know about, and we have to set them all up in modern America in the right state of mind for the climax. The author is successful in this, creating sympathetic and well-rounded cast, but at the sacrifice of strong conflict development.

Because of this, the arch-villain is not a serious factor in most of the book. He functions more as a shadowy symbol of the external threat from biased humans that all minorities keep in the backs of their minds. Then at the 80% mark, he shows up with a bang, and the final climax is a nicely orchestrated abduction/chase/fight sequence.

I do have one major complaint about the format. Multiple points of view can be useful, but they do have their drawbacks. In the best situation each character has different themes and individual ways of expression so that the reader always knows who we are following. Quite often, I had to go back to the beginning of the chapter to find out who I was travelling with.

And it becomes a real problem in the climax, where the suspense is raised by quick, snappy action sequences, and nothing breaks the tension worse than a “where the heck are we now?” moment.

I was a bit disappointed in the ending, as the solutions to the major conflicts seemed to come rather out of the blue. However, they were valid enough conclusions, and I was invested in the main character enough that I really wanted a happy ending, so I’m willing to accept them.

Recommended for those who want a different angle on the whole vampire thing. Also for those interested in the Jewish religion.

Four stars.