At the beginning of WW II, in a small village, there sits a boy with his grandmother. As he eats his soup, his grandmother tells him a tale of a giant nobleman by the name of Jusef Sardu. Jusef Sardu was a lover of nature and a compassionate man, a gentle giant they said. His father, Master Sardu, planned to take him on an expedition to feed on the meat of wolves to strengthen Jusef’s muscles, for he had grown so tall that he was weak and clumsy. Into the North Country, kaddishel, the dark forests, the Sardu men went. None were to return from these dark foreboding forests save for Jusef himself, and he never spoke of what happened to them on that horrid expedition. Jusef returned changed, and was rarely seen again.

Soon, though, in the villages around Abraham Setrakian’s grandmother’s home, children began to disappear. Two sisters were found as white as snow, their eyes opened and glazed with frost. Abraham’s grandmother warned him to eat and grow strong or Sardu would come and get him. Many years later the Nazis would force them to flee and as a result his grandmother would take her own life so that he could escape. He ran and heard the tick, tick, tick, of Sardu’s cane following him all the way, until and one night, as Sardu took the lives of the sick and old in the concentration camp, Abraham vowed he would be the one to put a stop to this great evil.

Many years later as an old man, Abraham still waits patiently for any sign of Sardu in order to exact his revenge. Meanwhile, the sign he is awaiting presents itself in the form of a strange and unexplainable event at the JFK International Airport. A Regis 777 carrying 210 souls lands and then suddenly goes completely dark. Ephraim Goodweather, the head of a specialized "Canary" team for the Center for Disease Control, is called in to investigate. When he arrives, he and his team begin unraveling a puzzle of bizarre and horrifying proportions.

This is a great story. It begins like a dark fairy tale and takes off from there to plunge the reader into an intriguing and sometimes horrifying mystery, only to metamorphose into a thrilling fight for survival. Hogan and Guillermo meld together as one and treat the reader to the gift of their combined imaginations.  This is not just another vampire story. Hogan and Guillermo’s vampires will strike fear into the heart of the reader. One is not just forced into a traditional and predictable vampire story but is lead along on an intriguing journey of vampiric discovery.