A Walk Through the Backlist: Sons of Rome

 

"What you brought back from Romania aren't stories. They're living, breathing animals, more dangerous and violent than you can even begin to comprehend. You have the scourge of the Ottoman Empire in your basement, and you want me to wake him up?"

"Well. Yes."

After more than a decade spent daydreaming, and doodling notes in the margins of my homework, after a shocking sequence of coincidences in which the thing I wanted to write revealed itself to be rooted in fact once researched, in the midst of a terrible case of pneumonia that would take me six months to shake off, I started work in January 2017 on what has been my most ambitious, most complex, most ridiculous project. My folly. The series no one asked for, and which quite a few people sent me hate mail for writing; the series I try hard not to dwell on these days because if I do, it's the only thing I want to write. Sons of Rome. 

White Wolf

Red Rooster

Dragon Slayer 

Golden Eagle

Altogether, the series as a whole is a Russian nesting doll of premises (ha). But the main premise is simple: Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were not human, but vampire infants, washing up amid the reeds of the Riber Tiber in their little basket. The wolf who nursed them was not merely a wolf, but a werewolf, and thus began the tradition of vampires keeping werewolf Familiars. In the present-day storyline, Remus is dead, but Romulus is not, and he's got ambitions that might just bring the world to its knees, unless his nephews - Vlad and Valerian Dracula - and their friends, mortal and immortal, can defeat him. 

The action itself, however, unfolds in an intricate, non-linear fashion, including deep dives into the past: from Tzarist Russia to WWII on the Eastern Front, to fifteenth century Romania, to, in the next book, the reign of King Richard I of England. I've always told non-linear stories, because I find them more interesting. In the case of SoR, the historical periods are not visited randomly; rather, we look back at the pasts of our immortal characters in the order in which we meet them, which is all a deliberate choice when it comes to powering the modern-day storyline forward. We start with Trina, which means we have to meet Nik and Sasha first, and so our first dip into the past is to WWII. In Dragon Slayer, we venture back to witness the rise and fall of Vlad Tepes, and his battle with the Ottoman sultan Mehmet the Conqueror. As war looms in modern times, our various contingencies of immortals clash, and then come together toward a common enemy. 

Sons of Rome is an ongoing series, meaning that, while there are victories and resolutions in each book, nothing is finished yet. All of our many, many characters still have growing and evolving to do; no one's story has reached a conclusion. Poor Mia, for instance, catches some flak for not being as "interesting" as her immortal counterparts, but I have plans for Mia. Just wait and see. 

This series is dark, and violent, and heartbreaking...but hopeful, too, in its way. Its scope is vast, but though its characters are many, they are all lovingly detailed, and the ultimate drivers of the story. I love all of them, even Alexei, the little brat. It's the sort of series best suited to readers who truly love to read. Anyone who wants to "get right to the point," or keep up with BookTok trends for the sake of being part of the crowd, is going to get bored of or actively dislike this series. This one's for the doorstop lovers, who don't care how long it takes, so long as they get to spend a little more time with these characters, and so long as their stories are told in the best way possible. 

The first four books are available, and though I haven't worked on the series in several years - for financial reasons; I have to write stuff that sells right now - book four ends on a really sweet note, and not a cliffhanger, so you can read them without being left hanging. I'd love to work on book five! So if you haven't tried the series yet, and you like dense, lush, character-driven paranormal drama, Sons of Rome might just be for you. The Kindle editions are an absolute steal at just 99c apiece right now.