I did enjoy this, but it has to be said: Criminy Stain may be one of the most laughable names I've ever come across in fantasy. It doesn't scream romantic hero to me, it screams like something unpleasant on an ad for washing powder.

Still a fun read, though. Letitia comes across a locket that acts as a portal to a world called Sang, which (unsurprisingly, given it's called Sang) is a place where vampires are a significant part of the population... and not only are there vampires, half the ecosystem runs on blood. Vampiric bunnies, vampiric rats, vampiric horses... it sounds demented but it works. It's also a very different sort of life to Letitia's real world job as a nurse, and her loving relationship with her elderly grandmother, but of course the problem of living in two worlds is that sometimes you have to choose. I have to say, I didn't care much for the guilt trip that Criminy laid on her a time or two - she only found the locket in the first place because he basically did a magic spell in Sang to bring him his perfect match. Only that spell is all about him, and never once in performing it did he think that his perfect match might have a life of her own, with things that she valued and couldn't abandon. I wish Letitia had brought that up, but she didn't. Which is a shame, as I liked her and would have liked to see her defend herself a little more there.

I did enjoy that there was no buckling to blackmail for her though. At the climax, she thought her way out of things very quickly, and was cool-headed and intelligent with no hand-wringing. I really dislike stories where evil people are allowed to go on and hurt others because the protagonist is too worried about their own moral status to effectively stop them, and that didn't happen here. Letitia was "You're evil, you need to go. Full stop." And fair enough too, I thought.