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A Taint in the Blood (Shadowspawn #1)

2.89 of 5 stars 2.89 · rating details · 398 ratings · 85 reviews

View our feature on S.M. Stirling’s A Taint in the Blood.

First in the new Shadowspan series from the New York Times bestselling "master of speculative fiction" (Library Journal).

Eons ago, Homo Lupens ruled the earth. Possessing extraordinary powers, they were the source of all of the myths and legends of the uncanny. And though their numbers have been greatly reduced, th...more

Hardcover, 432 pages

Published May 4th 2010 by Roc Hardcover (first published January 1st 2010)

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Mar 09, 2012 Caci rated it 3 of 5 stars

Title: A Taint in the Blood
Author: S.M. Stirling
Year of Publication: 2010
Publisher: ROC
Page count: 432

The story opens with Ellen crying in her car because she’d just broken up with Adrian due to his lack of communication in the relationship. Almost immediately she’s kidnapped by the guy’s twin sister, Adrienne.
Adrienne describes herself, while kidnapping Ellen, as Adrian’s evil twin. Proving that in fact Adrian was holding things back, severely; during the relationship if Ellen was unaware he ev...more Title: A Taint in the Blood
Author: S.M. Stirling
Year of Publication: 2010
Publisher: ROC
Page count: 432

The story opens with Ellen crying in her car because she’d just broken up with Adrian due to his lack of communication in the relationship. Almost immediately she’s kidnapped by the guy’s twin sister, Adrienne.
Adrienne describes herself, while kidnapping Ellen, as Adrian’s evil twin. Proving that in fact Adrian was holding things back, severely; during the relationship if Ellen was unaware he even had a twin sister.
Adrienne is a complete sociopath and has decided for some reason or another to piss off her brother by snatching Ellen, she comes out from California to Santa Fe, making it very obvious she was there by being intentionally caught on surveillance cameras.
Both Adrian and Adrienne are “Shadowspawn” not exactly vampires, not exactly shape shifters and not exactly dead… but choose all the things you like from each of the above categories and combine them into one creature and you have “Shadowspawn.” Essentially at this point we have these were-vampire twins with these powers and the ability to push likelihoods to turn out in their favor. Adrian, who was trying to deny his Shadowspawn side by living like a recluse in Santa Fe and Adrienne, the opposite, lives entirely instinctively, where whatever feels good and would make her happy is indulged.
The intent of the kidnapping is unclear, maybe an attempt to bring her twin back to the Shadowspawn side of things, but it’s really not well explained. Ellen’s whisked away to California and fed upon by the sexually and otherwise sadistic Adrienne regularly. She’s living in this terribly creepy community made entirely of people who either serve or feed Adrienne, and all the people living there are entirely mentally raped into thinking that what they’re experiencing is a good thing.
Adrian, of course, follows them to rescue his ex-girlfriend and stakes out the compound for a number of months. During his stake out Adrian even meets with Ellen both physically and in a weird dream-state. He woos her again; they fall back into love and even get engaged during these brief meetings. Though, since Adrienne is able to read Ellen’s mind when she’s close enough, Adrian enables her mind to forget the meetings until they are face to face again, sending Ellen without any knowledge or hope of the impending rescue back into hell.
Why Stirling doesn’t just have Adrian rescue the girl during one of the numerous face to face meetings, I don’t understand. From my point of view, putting Ellen through the months of sadistic emotional, sensory and psychological torture for a flimsy excuse of using Ellen during the ambush to help kill his twin is pointless. The ending fell flat for me; it happened with no reason as to why that was the appropriate setting and I feel the same result could have been accomplished at any point during the story. I guess the ending wasn’t executed well enough for me to make it plausible, even in an urban fantasy setting.
Overall the story was interesting, if slightly disturbing, and despite the lack of reasoning and coherency in many of the main characters actions it was a good read. I’d like to see if the story is given a sequel if it fleshes out a bit more.
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Jun 18, 2011 Caitlen rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I could not even make it 50 pages through this book. It was recommended to me by a friend and I feel really bad for not attempting to finish it, but I just can't get over the poor writing style and lack of detail - not to mention that I still have no idea what is going on, and who any of the characters are. The author describes things in a way to where I have problems picturing it in my head and I find everything very unrealistic. Yes, I realize this is a fantasy/sci fi type of novel, but even s...more

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Jun 18, 2010 Annette rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fantasy, horror-suspense-paranormal

Several months back we saw SM Stirling at the local bookstore: he was reading the first few pages of this book. As I gradually realized that it was a *vampire* novel, my first reaction was "Oh, No, you've sold out! The shelves are already filled with this dreck. Can't you give us another Change novel or something?" But, I also knew that since it was Stirling I would almost certainly read it. Thankfully, I got it from the library!

Not that I've ever believed Stirling to be prudish in any way, but...more Several months back we saw SM Stirling at the local bookstore: he was reading the first few pages of this book. As I gradually realized that it was a *vampire* novel, my first reaction was "Oh, No, you've sold out! The shelves are already filled with this dreck. Can't you give us another Change novel or something?" But, I also knew that since it was Stirling I would almost certainly read it. Thankfully, I got it from the library!

Not that I've ever believed Stirling to be prudish in any way, but the Change novels have minimal sex of any sort. The Draka series (see Marching Through Georgia, etc.) has considerably more, consensual and otherwise, and in this aspect as well as several others, "Taint" resembles these novels above anything else he's written. In fact, the vampires ("Shadowspawn") are in many ways the Draka writ large: utterly ruthless, amoral, and with actual super powers who regard their less gifted cousins as pets at best, cattle/prey more commonly. Or mice, with themselves as the cats.
Yes, there is the obligatory good-guy vampire making a valiant effort to rise above his upbringing and genetic need for human blood (his comes from the Red Cross), but his literal evil twin sister is a self-described sadist who kidnaps his estranged lover and proceeds to rape her at least twice a chapter if not more. I quickly found myself skipping whole pages of this unpleasantness and waiting with increasing impatience for him to rescue her. In fact, I raced through the book in three nights - usually I intentionally savor Stirling - just to get it over with, and gave serious consideration to quitting 1/2 way through. The plot is pretty predictable, honestly (good vampire and faithful human adept mentor try to rescue his girl and possibly save the rest of the world if its convenient), and none of the questions or "what ifs" posed were nearly interesting enough to make up for the excess of nastiness. And there weren't even any Father Ignatius or Sister Marya equivalents to balance out the general ugliness of the plot.
Unfortunately it ends on a cliff-hanger and I Almost want to know what happens next. But probably not enough to read the next one. At least not 'til someone else previews it for me and lets me know how many rapes I have to wade through to get to the rest of the plot.
I almost gave this 2 stars, and perhaps I should, but it does contain Stirling's typically excellent dialog, characters, and humor...
The 7th and last Change novel is out later this year. If you've never read Stirling, skip this one and rush out and grab "Dies the Fire." If you hurry you can catch up by the time it's out in paperback! (less)

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Aug 07, 2011 K. Bird rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book has so much going for it; readable prose, interesting characters, well thought out magic system, the tantalizing themes of dominance and submission in relationships...and yet I had to force myself to finish it.

The reviews seem to all focus on Adrian Breze as the main character, but truly, he spent so little time onstage I barely cared for him at all.

Truly the book is about how his evil twin sister, Adrienne tortures and rapes Adrian's ex girlfriend Ellen, and then goes on to detail the...more

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May 17, 2010 Donna rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: library, urban-fantasy

Adrian Brézé is a Shadowspawn, one of the powerful beings who are the source of most of the world's myths and supernatural lore. Adrian once fought against his own kind, but in recent years he's tried to live a more reclusive life. Then his evil twin, Adrienne, stole his girlfriend. Ellen, who knew nothing about Adrian's powers or thirst for blood until she was snatched away by his sadistic sister, now finds herself prisoner in a world where not even her thoughts are private.

Instead of what coul...more

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Sep 03, 2010 Starfire rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Absolutely NO-ONE I can think of

Shelves: urban-fantasy, 6-10

Hmmmmmm... it's *really* hard to know what to say about A Taint in the Blood. The thing is that it has some good worldbuilding type concepts in it that fit with its alleged urban fantasy genre. And I'll also say up front that I'm fairly predisposed to like any book that:

a/ has a main character who's comfortable with the fact that she's a masochist and a submissive, and still makes (for the most part) practical, sensible, intelligent choices; and

b/ very clearly lays out the difference between co...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Lianne Burwell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: urban-fantasy, vampires, library

As I was reading A Taint in the Blood, I was getting a bit of mental whiplash. Not because of the book, entirely, but because of my feelings about it.

Ellen is a pretty young woman, who in the opening chapter has broken up with her boyfriend, Adrian, only to get kidnapped by his twin sister and enemy, Adrienne. Adrian and Adrienne, it turns out, are members of a parallel race that is the basis for all our boogeymen (vampires, werewolves, etc), and claim to secretly control the world through subtl...more

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May 27, 2010 Jorge rated it 4 of 5 stars

this book was read because of the cover and the title. the cover looked cool with a guy and his motorcycle and the title of blood in it. there seems to be something going on with vampires latley like twilight and true blood, etc. I was glad I picked this book up though because it was actually good. its a science fiction book about another race on the planet called the Eons and a main character called jake who goes through life trying to survive with the Eons while he is a normal human being. He...more

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Sep 18, 2010 Thom rated it 2 of 5 stars

I really like Sterling's Emberverse series, so when I saw new series by him, I thought "why not"
It's basically a vampire story, with a little different twist. The plot is so so. Reformed vampire used his powers to help the "Brotherhood" fight the dark powers, until he got burned out fighting a losing war. Now his twisted sister wants to draw him back into the game and turn to the "dark side" I founded it interesting that the good guys seem to be stuck between fighting for a horrible future or...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Aaron Anderson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 6-science-fiction, 5-fantasy, horror

I was a bit saddened that Stirling wrote something so close to a vampire book. I have a bit of love-hate with this book/series. A perfect love with a vampire-like being seems so stale and overdone. At least most of the vampire-likes are horrible beings, which I tend to approve of. I did find the "magic" of the Shadowspawns interesting, but he also made it rather too powerful. Magic systems that aren't all-powerful are almost always more interesting.

Basically with all these complaints I shouldn't...more

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May 18, 2013 Kathy Davie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: urban-fantasy

First in the Shadowspawn urban fantasy series revolving around a twin rivalry. Primarily based along the California coast.

The start of this story is the blip in which Stirling's short story, "Pain and Suffering" (P&S) begins.

My Take
This is seriously creepy! I got turned on to this series by a short story I caught in Down These Strange Streets : "Pain and Suffering", and it sounded intriguing. I never expected a character like Adrienne. This woman is seriously evil. It's just incredible how...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Tristan Kamara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Would book with multiple genres such as action, suspense, drama and a bit of romance, all with a twist in classic history interest you? If so, imagine more, in A Taint in the Blood written by S.M. Stirling a New York Times best-selling author would be an excellent choice. Stirling has introduced a re-designed story of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan in a darker, more mature, and invitingly clever manner. His direction, the constant character background development and each character speaks on a dif...more Would book with multiple genres such as action, suspense, drama and a bit of romance, all with a twist in classic history interest you? If so, imagine more, in A Taint in the Blood written by S.M. Stirling a New York Times best-selling author would be an excellent choice. Stirling has introduced a re-designed story of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan in a darker, more mature, and invitingly clever manner. His direction, the constant character background development and each character speaks on a different emotion makes even this fiction novel relatable and phenomenal. The story follows Adrian Breze, Ellen Tarnowski, and the delightfully sinister maternal twin sister of Adrian, Adrienne Breze. The general plot unfold fairly quickly, yet leaving out just enough detail to have you in suspense, the knowledge you soon know shortly into the book is that in erased history there was a co-inhabitance of two separate human species. The forgotten humans ruled for 100,000 years, they were the Gods in Greek and Roman history, they were every fable, and they’re superior and know as the Shadowspawns. These Shadowspawns are evil vampiric-like super humans also with shape shifting. But they disappeared and were forgotten so history thought, but they truly never stopped ruling, in secret cults they’re in control of what really happens in Governments, Politics and even the media, the Spawns run the world. All explained by Adrienne to Ellen, after she had been kidnapped by Adrienne to lure her ex Adrian. However, Adrian once belonged to the cult Adrienne explains, but he rebelled had grown love for the humans and did not want to treat them they way the Spawns do, so he then decided to hide his identity and live in harmony. The year is 2010 and the spawns are creating army, an army to re-establish their dominance as the true rulers without the secrecy. Although, the Spawns are missing someone, they need Adrian, he and Adrienne are very strong Spawns and need him back. That’s why she captured Ellen knowing he’ll never willingly come to her. With the events already taken, the Spawns do not realize how difficult their mission will be, and as for the humans they have no idea what’s coming. For most people I would recommend this novel to ages fourteen and up due to graphic content. Although there are exceptions, for me the book was phenomenal to see a different side of this type of story, but people who don’t like this type of story might not be so interested. I truly think anyone would enjoy the way his words express the emotion and moods of the characters. He used terrific language that made the dialogue more real, like an actual conversation but also some challenging area as each character speaks on a very different level. I thought the book was really good; however vampires are over done he should of used something more creative. But seriously if you like sci-fi, or any type of fiction such as this go pick up a copy now!(less)

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Aug 30, 2012 Cami rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: vampires, paranormal, library-book, series

The beginning of the story was rather disorienting. I felt like I missed something, like I had started reading it from the second chapter rather than the first.

I wanted to like this book. But there were many parts of it that I really didn't enjoy. I especially disliked Adrienne and the way she treated people. Sadly it wasn't in one of those "people you love to hate" kind of ways. I really didn't like the main female character, Ellen, much either. This book is really kind of forgettable and I fi...more

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Jul 21, 2010 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ok ...well this was a weird one for me. The shadowspawn are supposed to be where all legends of bloodrinkers came from and why human's are afraid of the dark. Adrian's lover Ellen was abducted by his sister. His sister is one sick and twisted B'tch. There was a lot of rape, abuse of all kinds, and very twisted s&m going on in this book. There was also a love story going on here and in the end the "good" guys won over the bad...or so it seems. I don't really know what to think about this book...more

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Mar 21, 2013 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

50 Shades of Grey meets Vampire Urban Fantasy, with a smattering of Food Network.

Competently written, although I don't have a burning desire to read more in the series. If this were a movie, it would be softcore porn- most of the action is alluded to or talked about later, not described when it's happening. Vampires are born, not made, and don't follow exactly any vampire myth, legend, or universe that I know of, although it pulls from lots of different myths. And with their heightened senses, f...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Lali rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Having read Stirling's "Dies the Fire" series, I was pretty disappointed with this book. He's building a world with thousands of years of history, but gives the readers only tiny slivers of it. He establishes a dark, violent antagonist with a wide sadistic streak but doesn't really commit to making her very scary. His main character, Ellen, is resilient and able to rebound from terror, rape, torture, kidnapping, and mind games with Mary-Sue alacrity. The only parts of the text that are really ri...more

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Jun 07, 2010 Amber rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010, bookstore-reading

I've been a fan of Stirling's Change series for a while, so I thought I'd give his new urban fantasy a chance, and was pleasantly surprised. Stirling mixes all the supernatural stereotypes together to create the Shadowspawn, and for a bunch of bad guys, they were actually pretty fun, especially main character Adrian Breze's evil twin sister Adrienne. I was prepared to really dislike Ellen, the main love interest, since she seemed like a wet blanket type from the first page, but she had some stre...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Aves rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy, 1-star, never-finished, made-me-physically-ill

A note before I start my review: I didn't finish this book. I got about 1/3 of the way through it before stopping.

Now, I appreciate that the author is willing to show the villain being evil, but it got a bit overwhelming with some of the rape scenes. I like to think that I've got a fairly strong stomach, and I can for the most part handle reading "squicky" scenes in a novel. Here, though, what bothered me most is that some of the characters actually seem to enjoy being fed on and raped. Yes, th...more

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Sep 01, 2010 JC rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 11, 2010 Vanessa rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shadowspawn used to rule the Earth as gods. But you can get kind of lazy when you're immortal and nearly indestructible. After thousands of years of cross-breeding with humans, today's Shadowspawn posterity isn't as pureblooded, making for all kinds of problems. Even worse, humans have over-populated the Earth and kind of taken over things. By the time you get around to dealing with the issue, you have to do something drastic, say, another plague to wipe out all the extra humans so you can reest...more Shadowspawn used to rule the Earth as gods. But you can get kind of lazy when you're immortal and nearly indestructible. After thousands of years of cross-breeding with humans, today's Shadowspawn posterity isn't as pureblooded, making for all kinds of problems. Even worse, humans have over-populated the Earth and kind of taken over things. By the time you get around to dealing with the issue, you have to do something drastic, say, another plague to wipe out all the extra humans so you can reestablish yourself as the one in charge.

Adrian Brézé may not be pureblood Shadowspawn, but he's got enough that his ability in the Power is stronger than most, and he's decided that the blood is no excuse to treat the human race as sheep. The only problem is that the other almost-purebloods not only outnumber him thousands to one, they would never agree with him to leave humans alone. After years of trying to help the Brotherhood, a group dedicated to the eradication of Shadowspawn, he retires from the civil war. Unfortunately, his sister Adrianne decides to yank him back into Shadowspawn politics by kidnapping his ex-girlfriend. As he works to save Ellen, Adrian discovers the dismaying plans the Council has for the human race.

I'm not sure why, but S.M. Stirling decided it was his turn at a vampire urban fantasy series starting with A TAINT IN THE BLOOD. His successful Change Series has garnered him a well-deserved following, the post-apocalyptic stories grim yet hopeful. Now, instead of a retro Dark Ages setting, he tries his hand at magic and demons. Most of us are getting tired of all the blood-sucking out there (Gaiman thinks so too), but if it's going to stick around, the writing might as well be decent--and fortunately Stirling will force those vampire wannabe writers to step it up a notch, especially in showing how much vampires really are monsters. It's about time.

Stirling's big strength in all his books is world building. Here he takes the traditional vampire lore and twists it into a shape that's more interesting than most urban fantasy. There's the history and origins of modern-day 'demon cannibals' who are born not made, mix in Shadowspawn proclivities and lifestyle, add a pinch of killing methods and details about warfare, and fold in the rules of the Power and how to work around it. Then you bake it into something that looks like a regular cake, but is actually a lava cake filled with chocolaty goodness (couldn't help myself, the novel is filled with all sorts of foodie details).

This book has all the clichés. There's the main character Adrian, the wealthy and brooding immortal who's trying to break away from his evil family and their 'humans are only good for food' attitudes. There's the grizzled mentor Harvey, thrice divorced, who carries around his sawed-off shotgun with silver bullets and used to work with Adrian for the Brotherhood. There's the plucky heroine Ellen with the body of a goddess (she's a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe...), who endures torture at the hands of Adrian's sadistic sister while she awaits rescue. Have we read all this before? Sure, but not written with this much tongue-in-cheek and depth at the same time.

Yet, while TAINT is better than your average urban fantasy, it has its flaws. The most petty being that Stirling is italics happy--between all the telepathy and PoV character thoughts it got to be a little ridiculous. If you want me to get more serious, then I could complain about how poor Ellen must suffer Adrienne's sadist tendencies, and unfortunately we end up having to watch, including one incredibly unpleasant S&M scene. While Adrienne is a deliciously evil villain, the constant sexual abuse witnessed first hand and talked about among her blood herd of 'lucies' got redundant and overbearing.

One thing that starts out as a strength but ends up becoming a problem later is the pacing. Like his other novels, Stirling starts TAINT at a sprint, and blabs about back history along the way, hoping you can keep up. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, but the action is enough to keep you reading even if you don't 100% know what's going on. The action does get breakneck enough that readers will stumble and have to re-read when transitions are light on explanation; on the other end of the spectrum is a big gap of time that's glossed over, and even includes a hokey 'Rocky trains for the big fight montage' reference. It kind of felt like Stirling rattled off this book one weekend and had a lot of fun writing it, throwing together interesting concepts along the way, but didn't bother to go back and smooth it all out. What starts out as interesting world building by the end leaves some holes about how the magic works, which is pretty crucial to the plot. Add to that some contrivances, and you read the climax thinking, "What the..." or "That should not have worked."

I really wanted to like TAINT because I enjoyed Stirling's Change Series novels, but while it's well written and interesting, its over-the-top cruelty was difficult for me to read. The novel could give romantic vampire urban fantasy the jump start it needs, forcing realism and excellent writing into a usually fluffy and melodramatic sub-genre, and could attract readers who usually wouldn't pick up this kind of book.
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May 15, 2011 Lynn Calvin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bought-at-con

So - a variant (I'm not sure anything is really new anymore) on vampire/werewolf types. Clearly a setup for lots more, but a standalone.

Some fairly serious kink but without a huge amount of detail. Would be very triggery for abuse survivors, I think.

Ellen breaks up with her lover Adrian but is kidnapped by his evil sister. They are blooddrinkers, telepathic and shapeshifters. He'd hidden this from her. Sister is using her for bait and as a pawn in a larger game, keeping her as a "lucy," part of...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Dracolibris rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, horror, paranormal, vampires

I hate to put books down, but after getting halfway through this one, I just didn't want to go any further. Nothing has happened yet, except evil twin sister kidnapped and has been sadistically torturing and raping good/evil twin brother's girlfriend. The dialogue was painfully unrealistic and far too upbeat and perky for supposedly powerful creatures planning the demise of most of the human race. I just didn't like it, and so I am not going to force myself to finish it for finishing's sake.

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Oct 06, 2011 Aimee rated it 1 of 5 stars

I can't believe the same author wrote the "Dies the Fire" series - those books were so amazingly well written. I had a really hard time getting through this book. Maybe there is a book prior to this one that explains the Shadowspawn?!? I was lost during a lot of the book. Perspective was switched without *any* notice. It just didn't flow for me. I already have the second book in the series and am going to attempt to start it - but if it is anything like the first I may not attempt to finish it -...more

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Sep 13, 2010 Chela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Sub human (shadownspawn) Adrian Breze spends his exsitence shunning his true nature and being a loner. Which kind of sucks for his girlfriend Ellen. After a falling out Ellen is kidnapped by his pyscho twin sister Adrianne. From there Ellen is exposed to kinky and twised sexual and mental torture and a power struggle between fueding siblings ensues.
I read this book in under two days. I was quite surprised by the book since I hadn't read anything by S.M stirling before. But I am so glad I did. I...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Charlene rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've read quite a few S.M. Stirling novels and have been intrigued by his stories and devoted to his characters. With "A Taint in the Blood" I found myself skipping ahead now and then. There seemed to be occasional disconnects as the plot moved along. I would go back a few pages to see if I missed something important and would find that the storyline just changed quickly from one character's view to another's and I must not have been paying close enough attention. I really wanted this story to l...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Jim rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: audible, meh

Normally I'd be ecstatic about a new Stirling book but this one came up drastically short. Action wasn't impressive and mostly the rest of the book was just plain creepy. Not a fan. Please write more change novels mr Stirling. Maybe a stand alone of a different nation from my state? (west TX btw. Plains Indians, ag communities, survivalists, great scenery). Think about it Stirling.

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Jan 29, 2011 Music_lover3 rated it 1 of 5 stars

I'm not really sure what to say about this book. I couldn't finish it for one. It was dull and just overall weird. I love the cover, but the book...yeah not so much. This book was just...weird and from the little bit I read and skipped through, I see a lot of problems with it that I don't like or can really accept in the least. I'm extremely glad I borrowed this book from the library.

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Aug 22, 2010 Michelle rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was supposed to be a vampire type book, instead it was a glorification of violence, mental, physical and sexual. I found the text dragged at times. The author also seemed to skip over some background information that would have made the novel more fluent and cohesive. Instead, it stuttered and made it difficult to care about any of the characters.

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Jun 29, 2011 Carrie rated it 2 of 5 stars

I couldn't make myself finish this book. This book and I just do not click.

I'm having trouble connecting to the characters and some of the dialogue is throwing me a bit and I just can't seem to get a grasp on what's going on and not in a good Oh-this-is-going-to-be-exciting-when-I-find-out way. It's more of a Would-you-just-tell-me-what's-going-on-so-it's-bloddy-OVER way.

Just didn't do it for me. I'm actually proud I made it as far as I did. I was thinking of giving up way before now.

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Jun 26, 2011 Björn Clasén rated it 3 of 5 stars

Originell vampyr-fantasy. Ellen, som precis har lämnat sin mystiske pojkvän Adrian, blir kidnappad av hans syster Adrienne (som hon aldrig träffat). Adrienne är en Shadowspawn, dvs del av ett släkte människoliknande varseler med övernaturliga krafter som måste dricka människoblod för att kunna bruka sin magi. Det visar sig att Shadowspawn i hemlighet styr över jorden, och att Adrian för länge sedan förrådde sitt släkte och gick med i en motståndsorganisation som kämpar mot Shadowspawns herraväld...more

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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
ELEVEN READERS CL...: A Taint in the Blood Assessment	1	4	Jun 09, 2012 07:26pm
ELEVEN READERS CL...: A Taint in the Blood Update #5 (pages 345 to 422)	1	2	Jun 05, 2012 02:17pm
ELEVEN READERS CL...: A Taint in the Blood Update #4 (pages 263 to 344)	1	4	May 14, 2012 10:48pm
ELEVEN READERS CL...: A Taint in the Blood Update #3 (pages 169 to 262)	1	4	May 13, 2012 10:40pm
ELEVEN READERS CL...: A Taint in the Blood Update #2 (pages 91 to 168)	1	3	May 13, 2012 08:36pm
ELEVEN READERS CL...: A Taint in the Blood Update #1 (pages 1 to 90)	1	3	May 13, 2012 06:02pm
ELEVEN READERS CL...: Rationale	1	6	May 13, 2012 04:54pm

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About S.M. Stirling

Stephen Michael Stirling is a French-born Canadian-American science fiction and fantasy author. Stirling is probably best known for his Draka series of alternate history novels and the more recent time travel/alternate history Nantucket series and Emberverse series.

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Books by S.M. Stirling

Island in the Sea of Time (Nantucket, Book 1)

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7114749-a-taint-in-the-blood?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1306899180l/7114749.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7114749-a-taint-in-the-blood?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]A Taint in the Blood by S.M. Stirling[/url]

A Taint in the Blood (Shadowspawn #1)

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