Devil's Kiss by Sarwat Chadda
Puffin, 2009. ISBN 9780141325873.
(Ages 12+) Billi has been sent to kill the 6 year old
boy in the playground. She balks at the task, but she is a vampire
slayer, one
of a select group of people descended from the Knights Templars of the
Crusades. Immediately the reader is hooked, wondering what she is going
to do,
appalled that she is being made to kill a child. The setting is London
of
today, so the reader is taken through the sights and sounds of a modern
city,
the setting against which this band of impoverished slayers exists.
They must fulfill their destinies, but Billi
balks at hers, wanting desperately to be like anyone else. The task of
keeping
London safe from the evil which has existed for more than a millennium
eats at
her, and she constantly spars with her distant father about their
mission. When her friend Kay returns form
training in
Jerusalem, they visit the most sacred of places where the Seal of
Jerusalem is
kept, and inadvertently, Kay releases the evil, and they know that
people will
die.
A horrific take on the vampire genre, Devil's
Kiss will keep the students reading, as they take the ride through
the
city
along with Billi, Kay and her father, as well as a gaggle of other
recruits, in
search of Michael, the archangel, one of their kind who has fallen into
evil
and must be destroyed. Children die in the hospital nearby as they
close in on
their prey. A highly entertaining read, great characters and an
involving
setting, the second in the series, The Dark Goddess, is due
shortly and there is a website
which
will add to the mood evoked by the book.
Fran Knight