Blood Country is Jonathan Janz’s sequel to The Raven, one of his most famous works.A unique twist on a post-apocalyptic story where a rampant virus turns people into monsters. Vampires, sirens, werewolves, and more now roam the wastelands, preying on the surviving human beings. Dez McClane is a rare being without any special powers, attempting to survive with those closest to him.

Wasting little time, Blood Country kicks the action right off at the start of the book. From the first word, we are reminded that this is a world of death, where monsters can lurk around any corner. The ultimate conflict concerns our heroes taking on a kingdom of vampires, where the Vampire Queen has Dez’s ex-girlfriend and the daughter of one of his friends locked away. The mission is to rescue them.

Janz’s writing story remains extremely strong throughout. Characterization remains one of his finest talents. With scant lines of dialogue, Janz establishes the survivors and their personalities while making us feel for them and their goals. The horror is skillfully painted, with tense scenes of attacking vampires and the sheer paranoia of what might happen next.

One of the weaker aspects of the book is the dialogue. There is a great deal of pop culture references that distract from the overall plot and conflict. This is an ultimately minor complaint, but the pacing also comes off as uneven for such a brisk book, with the action ramping up into high-octane and blood-soaked climaxes after lengthy ponderous discussions, and ends very suddenly.

Blood Country continues fascinating worldbuilding and terrific characters, but feels like a slice of a much larger story.

In The Raven, Dez and Iris made a pact to help each other find their lost loved ones. For him, it was his abducted girlfriend, Susan; for her, her kidnapped four-year-old daughter, Cassidy. In the eight months since The Raven's fiery conclusion, Dez, Iris, and their companions Michael and Levi, have discovered that Susan and Cassidy have been stolen away by vampires, and are being held in the heart of Blood Country. Now is their chance to rescue their lost, but it may be a suicide mission - there's a reason vampires are among the most feared monsters, after all - and that's if Susan and Cassidy are even still alive, let alone still human.

Of course, there's other complications to consider, still. In the eight months Dez and Iris have been traveling together, he's become quite smitten with her and Janz spends a fair amount of time showcasing Dez's inner conflicts. He's beholden to Susan by a promise to find her, to rescue her, but at the same time, time has marched on and the heart wants what the heart wants. He's madly in love with Iris, and torn about what rescuing Susan means for him, for her, and for Iris. It's a quandary of a love triangle, to say the least. That this love triangle is set against a dead, post-apocalyptic America now filled with all sorts of diverse monsters is but another wrinkle.

The backdrop upon which Janz's latest series rests is as marvelous as it is unlikely, but the fun of it all is worth its weight in suspended disbelief. Some years prior to all this, a group of geneticists-turned-terrorists discovered that all the monsters of myths and legend were, in fact, real, and that their genetic markers still existed in latent form in human DNA. These scientists then built a bioweapon that activated these ancient genes, turning humans the world over into ancient creatures, like vampires, werewolves, sirens, cannibals, minotaurs, and more, all of which are now vying for power. Society crumbled, and the small human population of Latents, those without any kind of powers, like Dez, struggle to survive in the aftermath.

How Dez survives, in fact, is a bit of a running joke and even he knows he really has no business still being alive in such a radically changed world. He's got balls, certainly, but he also has some very capable friends and companions, like the pyrokinetic Michael, even as he sometimes clumsily charges his way through one death-defying scenario after the next. Much of his survival skills boil down to sheer determination, and he squares off against superpowered monstrosities with little more than his own sense of conviction and headstrong will (and a fair amount of boneheadedness). One can't help but wonder if that actually is his superpower and that he may not be quite as Latent as he thinks...

As the second in a trilogy, Blood Country does a fine job setting up the third book and building on some of the parameters of this changed world introduced in The Raven. Janz, smartly, wraps up the dangling plot threads left by the prior novel, putting Dez and Iris's mission to rescue their loved ones front and center, rather than dragging out that storyline in some kind of tortured sense of delayed gratification, while also putting a very large target on their backs. He also writes some grand action scenes, delivering solidly on the promise of vampiric horror and plenty of post-apocalyptic action. Dez's storyline, though, is already beginning to feel a bit one-note and repetitive, as the next installments promises him setting off on yet another quest to rescue somebody else he knows. I'm still game for Book 3, certainly, as Janz has built up a world of possibilities here, not to mention a whole wide world of bloodthirsty terrors to confront.

I’d want to say Thank you to Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for my ARC copy.

For someone like me who is obsessed with vampires so much, I stumbled on this book coincidentally.

Honestly I came into Blood Country without having read the first book in the series, but I was able to meet and understand the characters as I went. In this story, we meet Dez McClane, a man whose sole purpose is to track down his wife who has been taken by vampires into "Blood Country," where the vampires rule and hunt, led by a powerful queen. In his journey he encounters friends who also want to survive this chaotic world. This story opens with a post apocalyptic world where scientists unleased a virus that awakened the dormant strands of human DNA. Some monstrous and others undisturbed, those being the Latents, those creatures left behind with no extraordinary powers. There are monsters, heroes, werewolves and vampires and trolls and gape-mouthed monster fish. Uh-oh!!

Janz was able to weave an intricate story with wonderful characters, character development and humour. Fast paced, thrilling, and such a wonderful read! I am in awe of Janz’s range of writing.

The sequel to Janz’s second instalment of his Raven series is an excellent follow-up. Continuing from where the first book left off, we have the gang together and things are not what they appear as they fight to find the loved one that they left behind.

The characters again are as strong as in the previous book but more drawn out with emotional depth and understanding brought to the foreground. All the characters we loved show up as well as the undergound menace make an appearance but with more gusto then the predecessor.

Janz has woven and indepth landscape for his characters to run around in and add slight nuances to the setting and characters that lifts this. He is an experience writer enough to know that he gives bits and pieces of information from the last book to refresh the minds for this book but doesn’t over egg the pudding making this an enjoyable appearance. Most often than not, most writers give us a hundred pages of what happened before to the point of exhausting, for example JK Rowlings Harry Potter series). Janz doesn’t do this but peppers things through to create a strong unique narrative.

Overall, this is a worthwhile book to read and enjoy and a real page turner. The characters are crisp and deep whilst the villains are deviously dark but have enough meat on their bones to give them that extra dimension beyond the typical villain form. Strong story telling and even if you do not read the first, this book still entices the newbies along with the story and if you have read the first, the book is even more excellent. Highly recommend.

I really wanted to read this book, but the ARC formatting was all wonky. I posted it as DNF but that dropped my percentage score.

I came into Blood Country without having read the first book in the series, but it took right off, and I was able to meet and understand the characters as I went. This is an action-packed book that covers a short period of time, but fleshes out a world, and a group of comrades, perfectly. Dez is searching for Susan, who he was unable to save, and who has been taken by vampires into "Blood Country," where the vamps rule and hunt, led by a powerful (and very full of herself) queen.

That the world is populated by those who were once human, but who were exposed to a biological weapon that released oppressed genetic characteristics is the key. There are monsters, heroes, werewolves and vampires and trolls and gape-mouthed monster fish. For the most part, you get a flash of monster that fades slowly to show the struggling humanity beneath.

As relationships shift and evolve, and various groups vie for control, a rag-tag band of heroes launches an impossible rescue attempt against impossible odds... while maintaining a level of snarky banter that simply never falls flat.

Very well done and builds well into the next book in the series.

Jonathan Janz really knows how to pull his readers in, I did not want to put this book down. Great sequel to The Raven.

Jonathan Janz never fails to entertain. BLOOD COUNTRY is the fantastic sequel to THE RAVEN! I love vampires and Janz is here to scare the crap out of YOU!

It's been a while since I read Part One of The Raven so it took me a moment to find my way back to the world obliterated by virus and overrun with monsters. You'll absolutely need to have read The Raven before starting Blood Country which picks up where we left.
I was pleased to find alongside the standard vampires, werewolves, cannibals etc there are some really interesting creatures of obscure folklore included this time.

Somehow I had forgotten quite how brutal Janz can be! Settle your stomach for some blood-splashing, brain-stomping action.
For the most part The Raven books are nonstop action. Fighting, running, hiding and scavenging in a world where any myth and monster imagined exists.

However, I found multiple drawbacks to such long unending fight scenes. Whilst the pacing explodes during the initial encounter, after several pages of non stop violence the impact begins to dull.
Despite the characters being -for the most part- weary malnourished humans, they are continuously outnumbered in battle by supposedly super powerful beings and yet never come out with more than a few scrapes?
Also, on atleast three occasions our protagonists survive by ridiculous, timely coincidences.
All this combined really limited the tension for me, the sense of danger refined by the world building Janz had laid out all but evaporates when time and time again they win out with minimal consequence.

The characters themselves are loveable. Dez continues with his brooding self reflection and pity but balances this with loyalty and love for his found family.
Michael adds some much needed wit and sarcasm to lighten the tone whilst Levi and Iris have settled into hopeful child and caring mother figures respectively.
I found myself invested in both their survival and their joint rescue mission, enjoying their dialogue perhaps more so than the plot itself.
For that reason, despite a reveal later in the novel I don't believe I will continue the series.
Were the fight scenes to be heavily edited, as I feel they need to be, I'm not sure there would be much substance left in the plot.

Blood Country was fun, but reads more like a movie than a novel. Adapt it for screen and I'd have a wicked time, unfortunately the pacing and lack of consequence leads me to rate this an average read.

Uhm, yes. All the yes. This is the second book in the series, and I. am. hooked. The first book is definitely worth the read and I would 100% start there. This book continues the story of Dez, Iris, Michael, and Levi are on a mission to save Iris' daughter Cassidy and Dez's lady love (or is she?) Susan. Before they can do that, however, they've got to get Michael some life-saving antibiotics from the Latent-deserted pharmacy in a nearby town. Battles ensue - the descriptions of which are so good - and they continue on to try to find their people. I won't spoil it, but this book is full of adventure, suspense, super-intense fight scenes, and you're never quite sure our people are going to make it. I cannot wait to read more. It. is. so. worth it!