A Guardian's Touch by Stein Willard

In Transylvania in 32 B.C, Tahlia Oliveira was turned into a vampire. Tahlia is destined to become the Vampire Queen, one of the most feared and dangerous royal vampires to ever exist. Prior to her re-birth as a vampire, Tahlia had fallen deeply in love with Aurora, the daughter of the head of Caesar’s bodyguards. It broke both Tahlia’s and Aurora’s hearts when Tahlia had to leave Rome to go to Transylvania. It was unavoidable though, her mother wanted the best for Tahlia and she needed the money that she would receive for handing over Tahlia to Lecrac, supposedly to further her education.

Tahlia and Aurora had formed an unbreakable bond between them that would last throughout the centuries that followed. As each century passed by, Tahlia’s only reason for her existence in the vampire world was for her lover to be re-born, reincarnated.

Tahlia loves her mortal partner from each re-birth until her mortal death. The cycle is endless. The times in between her lovers reincarnation are torture for Tahlia.

Then the day comes when her lovers re-birth clashes with an enemy set on destroying the vampire hierarchy, an enemy of old, an enemy known to Tahlia. The threat will not be against Tahlia directly. Indirectly though, the threat will jeopardize Tahlia’s un-dead existence, therefore upsetting the Royal Clan Vampires forever. Will Tahlia be able to outwit and destroy the enemy?

This is the first book in a new vampire series, it is also Stein Willard’s debut book. The book is wonderfully well written, the story is tense and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough at first. I had to stop myself, to slow down and savor the story. It is much too good to rush through.

The characters are well formed, each plays a crucial part into the progression of the story. The settings are described so that they leave nothing to the imagination. I was there, living this story alongside of the vampires and mortals. The sights, sounds and smells all came alive. I was totally in tune with this story, nothing else around me mattered except for finishing this book.

As well as learning all about the vampire clan over the centuries, we learn of the emotions of a love that transcends all time and lasts through the centuries to the present day.

The heat of Tahlia’s and her mortal lover’s love just belts off the page throughout the book, no matter what century we are reading about. To say the romance is hot, would be an understatement, it’s sizzling.

Stein has seamlessly woven the story of the past and the present into a gripping book that I simply could not put down.

I’m really looking forward to seeing which direction the next book in the series will take. I’ve read many vampire books, this is one of the best I’ve read in a long while. I hope Stein is not going to keep us waiting for the next book in this series.