Book: Innocent Blood by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

Published December 2013 by William Morrow|733 pages

Where I Got It: I borrowed the e-book from the library

Series: The Order Of The Sanguines #2

Genre: Adult Thriller

A vicious attack at a ranch in California thrusts archaeologist Erin Granger back into the folds of the Sanguines, an immortal order founded on the blood of Christ and tasked with protecting the world from the beasts haunting its shadows and waiting to break free into the sunlight. Following the prophetic words found in the Blood Gospel–a tome written by Christ and lost for centuries–Erin must join forces with Army Sergeant Jordan Stone and the dark mystery that is Father Rhun Korza to discover and protect a boy believed to be an angel given flesh.

But an enigmatic enemy of immense power and terrifying ambition seeks the same child–not to save the world, but to hasten its destruction. For any hope of victory, Erin must discover the truth behind Christ’s early years and understand His first true miracle, an event wrapped in sin and destruction, an act that yet remains unfulfilled and holds the only hope for the world.

The search for the truth will take Erin and the others across centuries and around the world, from the dusty plains of the Holy Land to the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean, from the catacombs of Rome to an iron fortress in the Mediterranean Sea, and at last to the very gates of Hell itself, where their destiny–and the fate of mankind–awaits.

With The Blood Gospel, the first novel in the Order of the Sanguines series, James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell breathtakingly combined science, myth, and religion and introduced a world where miracles hold new meaning and the fight for good over evil is far more complicated than we ever dreamed. In Innocent Blood they again take us to the edge of destruction . . . and into the deepest reaches of imagination.

I liked this one! I think I liked it a little bit more than the first one, and I’m curious to see how th next one goes.

I feel like we have a better grasp of the world in this book. Now that we’re past the first book, and past the introduction stage, we were actually able to get into everything a little bit faster. I liked seeing Rhun, Stone and Erin work together to find the First Angel. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I did like it, and seeing them work through made the book a pretty interesting read.

I really liked Judas and Elizabeth Bathory in this book. I really liked following them over the course of the book- much more than Rhun, Stone, and Erin. They both had a lot of things to explore and deal with, and they were a big part of why I kept reading.

I also liked seeing what was going on with Tommy. His relationship with Elizabeth was interesting, especially knowing what she had done hundreds of years earlier. Her protectiveness definitely got my attention, and it was one of the things I really liked seeing change during this book.

I didn’t love it, though, and I can’t place why. The concept is interesting, at least to me, and so far, I do think it’s a book to check out if you like anything by Dan Brown. That hasn’t changed since the first book. I did want to keep reading to see what would happen, and I’ll definitely be continuing the series. That also hasn’t changed. But I also feel like I don’t have anything else to say about the book.

3 stars. I liked Innocent Blood, and a couple of the characters were really interesting to follow. I still want to know what happens next!