Author: Christopher Farnsworth
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9780340998151
Cade was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in 1867 when President Andrew Johnson pardoned him. In return, Cade agreed to defend the nation against all threats from the ‘Other Side’.
Being immortal, Cade had served several Presidents and has had a succession of liaison officers since then, his new one is a young but politically savvy Barrows. Sharp and ambitious, Barrows is on his way up. But when he gets a call from the White House, it is not quite the promotion he expected. Instead, he is being offered to be the new political liaison officer to the President’s vampire, Cade. And Cade is the world’s only hope against a new terrorist threat advancing from the Middle East.
Farnsworth's story plot of combining vampire and political-secret agent is a clever one. It is impressive how he worked it into Blood Oath. His writing style and storyline are captivating. The writing is slick, neat and gripping, the story flow is well paced in all the chapters which are mostly kept short. Most of them are introduced by short excerpts from the past or writing of a journal or report, and this helps generate a nice ambience to the overall story.
Cade's character is written more along the lines of a vampire as the alien rather than the vampire as the misunderstood human with a drink problem and bad teeth. While this leaves Blood Oath with a protagonist who appears remote and inhuman, it also makes Cade a refreshing change from the other vampire fiction characters.