The answer is as unexpected as it is horrible: one night, he discovers a new hunger – a mindless craving for blood. Horrified at himself, he flees into the night, but when he tries to find sanctuary, he ends up almost getting killed. As he starts to realize that even a predator can become prey, he runs into Garangjas – another man who drinks blood. Irresistibly drawn, he follows Garangjas to his flock of ‘Confirmands,’ a weird group of people who might just be his ticket to survival.
There’s just one problem: how can the Confirmands stay alive if the rest of humanity dies out?
A deadly disease was spreading was wiping everyone out at a rapid pace. Human bodies were not absorbing their food anymore, so they were essentially starving, even though they were eating. No matter how much they ate, the food would pass through their bodies like nothing even happened. I have to say, this was an interesting concept and one I'd not read before.
Our MC (who we don't learn the name of until the end) had stopped wanting to eat. He and his family were worried that he'd die soon, just like everyone else was. But he realized his sudden urge for blood, followed by an unfortunate incident that had him running.
Frantically running, until he ran into Garangjas, who, like the MC, had a craving for blood. But Garangjas knew what they were and how to help the MC, so Garangjas took him into their "flock".
OK. First, what the MC did to make him run was pretty horrific and he just kind of... moved on from it. He was at home and craved blood and took care of the urge... I think you get the idea. How does he just move forward after that? Like nothing happened? There was some remorse, but not enough for me to like him or care about him.
The storyline was sort of all over the place and was hard to follow. There was a lot of weird terminology and euphemisms. Like the vampires (who weren't actually called vampires, but Confirmands) used the word virgin a lot in reference to the MC and I'm not sure why. Did they mean that literally? And how was it relevant to anything? I don't know. It threw me. And why did they call blood wine? I kind of get it when they were drinking the blood to call it something else so they could distance themselves from the gruesome reality. But calling it wine instead of blood when blushing... yeah, it was a bit too much.
And then the (non)relationship with Garangjas was not developed enough. Well, not for the ending they had, anyway. I would have been OK with them if the ending were different.
All in all, not a great read for me. I've liked Ingela Bohm in the past, so I'll be looking into her books again in the future, but I can't recommend this one.
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