Blood Loss: Book Two of the Young Blood Trilogy

Not what I expected. Better, in fact.

I read the first book in this series, Young Blood, and was very much looking forward to the sequel when it came out. What I didn’t expect was that rather than picking up where Book 1 left off (which was a pretty tense cliffhanger), instead what we get is a sorta prequel/retelling/sequel all at once. I was put off by this at first, but very quickly, I got caught up and intrigued by the stories being told, how they were both familiar and yet so different. When told by the first person narrator in Book 1, events seemed one way, but now they’re described by lots of different narrators, many of who were nameless victims of the vampires. Like in Book 1, the vampires killed a bunch of people at a racetrack, and in Book 2, we find out the names of some of those people and what their lives were like before they died. The reader is given more reason to care about who these victims were. Some of the stories are quite sad, and it makes the heartlessness of the vampires and their killing that much more horrific in context. Sometimes, it’s the victims’ families who get their own chapters, and we see how they deal with the loss of their loved ones. It’s not all gloom and sadness, though. As this bigger picture gets slowly revealed, there are hints that something more sinister is going on. That’s what really moves this book past the first one (maybe even into the third?), and there’s a sense of things spreading outward, moving forward, in ways that aren’t fully explained but are intriguing.

Structurally, Blood Loss is a lot different from the book before it. For one, it’s shorter, about half as long. There are individual chapters this time, some of them very short (less than a page), like newspaper clippings, diary entries, and letters. Other times, things are more fleshed out. This variation helps things feel like they’re moving along quickly, and it’s fun seeing how various characters and events correspond to each other and to their counterparts in Book 1. There were a lot of moments of, “Oh, so that was the person who…” It’s not a total rehash, though, since there are lots of new characters that are introduced as things expand. Not only that, but there’s a lot more diversity in this book, both in terms of male and female characters and people of different ages and races, but not to the point where it feels like it’s trying too hard. Instead it shows how in retrospect, the narrator of Book 1 had a very limited viewpoint. Even some of the other vampires get their chance to speak up and be heard, and I should also mention that not every character in this book is sympathetic and someone you’ll be rooting for. Some of them, vampires and humans alike, are pretty horrible. But that helps keep it interesting.

In a weird way, I almost wish I had read this volume of the series first since it would have provided more context for Book 1. Someone else could probably read this on its own and still get a lot out of it, and maybe it’s an easier way “in” to the trilogy. But that’s not how it happened for me, and who knows, maybe the author did it that way on purpose. Things do feel very intentional and calculated, how everything is structured. I have no idea how Book 3 (whenever it comes out) will fit into all this, if it will follow the same format or fly off in some other unexpected direction. But I’m here for it anyway.