Blood of Innocence by Tami Dane

TDane-Blood of InnocenceI enjoy romantic suspense as well as paranormal romance/UF novels.  Tami Dane’s Sloan Skye series seems to combine the elements of RS with some freaky paranormal elements.  So of course I’m gonna be all about reading it *G*. Blood of Innocence is the 2nd novel in the series and I really enjoyed the first novel, Blood of Edenand was excited when I got to read Blood of Innocence for review.

Gifted profiler Sloan Skye joins the hunt for an elusive serial killer–and discovers a breed of criminal few know exists…

A cynic by nature, Sloan Skye wasn’t thrilled when she was assigned to the FBI’s Paranormal Behavioral Analysis Unit. But her doubts are slowly easing, especially when she sees that working on the fringe allows her to use some of her more unconventional tactics. Most of all, Sloan’s grateful her career is on track–because her love life, if you can even call it that, is in shambles.

Sloan is searching for a suspect who slays his female victims at night, and bizarrely drains their bodies of blood. Bad enough, but when Sloan learns what the killer is really after, she can barely sleep at night. When the suspect guns for someone very close to Sloan, it’s time to throw out the rules and face her deepest fears…

I’m not really going to spend much time on the characters, as you can get more of that from my review of Blood of Eden.  The characters really haven’t changed much with the exception that Sloan seems more determined than ever to push back on any romance that was set up back in Blood of Eden…with both JT or Gabe.  That was rather frustrating for me. She came off as too hard headed and stubborn in this area.  Granted I’m a JT fan and really want to see that develop, but sheesh, Sloan needs to get off her high horse when it comes to the “no dating” thing and believe that these guys can be and are interested in her…that she has things to offer and is attractive.

Something that really annoyed me through much of Blood of Innocence was that the set up of the entire series is that it’s based around an FBI unit….the PBAU, which is the paranormal behavioral analysis unit (fans of Criminal Minds, yes this is a play on the BAU from that tv series).  There is a serial killer on the loose, killing women who’ve recently given birth and the infants have disappeared.  The team takes forever in getting to the killer being some sort of paranormal creature. Um…hello…you work for the PBAU, emphasis on the “P” part of that acronym.  Why on earth were they looking for a human for so long is beyond me and annoyed the crap out of me.  Heck *SPOILER* even I knew it was gonna be some sort of vampire from basically the beginning. I wanted to bang my head against something that was hard….a wall, desk, you get the picture.

I did enjoy the plot of Blood of Innocence as Dane gives us a different lore on vampires, introducing the reader to a subspecies I wasn’t quite familiar with.  It was able to shape shift…and again, with all the references to a certain animal going on and other clues, I can’t say enough that it was annoying that it took everyone so long to connect the dots to a paranormal creature.  But I digress.  I liked seeing different lore.  Also, I liked seeing Sloan finally give some credit to her crazy mother.  I really think her mom isn’t nearly as crazy as everyone, including Sloan, has thought.  I think her mother, while human (or is she? I’m wondering if in future books we find out momma isn’t quite human either) can sense the paranormal creatures and that may have attributed to the schizophrenic diagnosis…

I also liked the subplot involving Elmer, the elf Sloan was promised to by her father when Sloan was born.  This subplot provided some comic relief…though Blood of Innocence kind of ends on a cliffhanger involving a deal between Sloan and Elmer. I’m quite curious to see what develops here and whether this subplot becomes more of a main plot in Blood of Dawn.

My overall opinion on  Blood of Innocence is that it was OK.  The writing style was decent..easy to follow but see above for my major annoyance.  There was ebb and flow on action, some comic relief but very little romance.  I enjoyed Blood of Innocence and am looking forward with continuing to read the series, but it isn’t on my top lists of books or series.  But it is a nice change of pace from my normal reading and that is never a bad thing.

Read Order:
Blood of Eden
Blood of Innocence
Blood of Dawn 
(Dec., 2012)

About Nicole 146 Articles
Attorney by day, Publicist for Barclay Publicity and reviewer/LE (assistant) editor by night. I'm a huge book nerd and love to read. I have 2 dogs, both Labrador retriever mixed breeds, who are very rotten and think they run the house. Let's not lie, they totally do, I just can't them know it ha ha! My usual genre is romance or urban fantasy. I love all things having to do with paranormal, with the occasional good contemp/BDSM/erotica thrown in to spice it all up.