Blood Ritual by L Rosario

What would you give up for love? Age old question, another vampire answer. But with a new twist on the requirements to becoming a vampire.

To become queen of a vampire coven, Sylvia must endure the ritual of blood, a rite of passage in which she sacrifices her body, blood, and soul to the seductive vampire ruler. His gift to her is eternal life, but what she really wants is his eternal love.

Sylvia is a human that the vampire ruler/king has chosen to make his queen. She has loved him from the moment she saw him. Now, after a month ‘apart,’ she is ready for the Blood Ritual that will transform her into the coven’s new queen. She even faces down a detractor from the coven who thinks the queen should be chosen from within, not some lowly human.

Sylvia must face her fear and be willing to give her “body, blood and soul” to the ruler/king of the vampire coven. She knows she will die this night as part of the transformation to become a vampire. She wants to do this to be forever with the ‘man’ she loves, but that doesn’t lessen the fear. She knows he cares for her, but hopes he will come to love her as she does him.

I feel guilty writing this review. I do write honest reviews, so here goes. I don’t know if Blood Ritual doesn’t measure up because it is an earlier work, if it was just cut short, or if because I read some of the other books first and know the characters & later situations better. But Blood Ritual lacks that final spark of Rosario’s other books. All the elements needed are here, but it just missed something extra that I can’t quit figure out, maybe just the space to work it. And the ending itself seemed cut short as well.

Blood Ritual doesn’t even develop the characters fully. We know that Sylvia has known the vamp ruler/king for months and loves him, but that is all. Not anything about her, not much at all about him, not even if she is his servant before the Ritual. Yes, they are lovers, she loves him and he has chosen her, but that seems to be all.

As for the Ritual itself in Blood Ritual, it is much more detailed than most vamp transformations, but even that is a bit confusing. Of course, he must drink/drain her blood. It has to be done at the sacred stone/alter, during a certain night (full moon?), and all of the coven must participate. But did the coven ‘donate’ blood or just bite the ruler/king or what? That got confusing.

Blood Ritual does introduce us to the coven and to characters later written about in other books/stories. There is even foreshadowing of a future problem(s) for the new queen. I do like how much these two care for and about each other. That she is will to become a vampire for him and he is willing to face down his coven for her speaks loud and clear. I was glad to get an “inside” on these characters who are in the background in other books I’ve read by Rosario.