The Ancient Ones by Cassandra L Thompson

At face value, The Ancient Ones by Cassandra L Thompson blends all the elements that I love about the vampire genre – broad-sweeping historical ages, interesting characters, and intrigue, seasoned with a heavy dose of mythology. But alas, while the writing is generally engaging, this one failed to quite get off the ground for me.

We meet David, or Davius, depending on which era we see him in, who starts his life as the son of a Celtic druid who ends up sold into slavery by Roman conquerors. There, he loses both his life and his love, but also discovers his innate connection to the gods, which gift him with unimaginable powers. The story jumps between past and Victorian-era London, with a little detour to Romania, as David recounts his life to a lady of dubious repute he takes home with him, and who avidly listens to what he has to tell.

Thompson has certainly bitten off quite a lot with this book, and it's impossible to read it without drawing parallels with Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles – and perhaps Thompson's threading together of so many different myths is the story's downfall. There's just too much going on so that the story ends up disjointed and somewhat all over the place.

My main feeling was that the writing is often too fast, too shallow in places, with David not being grounded within any of the contexts of the eras in which he lives. A tale of this scope would be better served if the narrative was slower, measured, and with focus on characterisation, slowly unfolding intrigue, and a higher degree of historical accuracy, not to mention the moments where I struggled to suspend disbelief (yeah, yeah, I know, I can deal with suspending disbelief to have a story with blood-drinking immortals). There were, however, moments where I had to grit my teeth a little.

Thompson writes well, and does so from the heart, and her writing often delivers some beautifully descriptive lines, but I do feel that more attention could have been given to editing this novel at the developmental stage – especially where the writing is too fast to the point where it's slippery trying to unpick what's going on. It's not a bad little book, if historical fantasy featuring vampires, gods, and assorted supernatural entities is your jam, just that this could have been executed with a bit more finesse.