Customer Reviews

The Midnight Guardian: A Millennial Novel

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Midnight Guardian is a fast-paced, fun read. It's ideal when you want to curl up by the fireplace with a smooth scotch and great page turner. If you like vampires and you're too grown-up for abstinence porn, this will surely satisfy a more sophisticated palate. Set in both London and Germany during the brink of WWII, vampires try to dismantle the Nazi regime through cunning, force and a dash of hope. Brigit the vampire protagonist has a wicked sense of humor and a soft heart, and the interplay among her cohorts, as well as their "dinner" companions, is engrossing, well developed and thoroughly enjoyable. Sarah Jane Stratford is clearly a rising star.

Vampires fighting Nazis! What more could you want?! But even beyond the undeniably perfect hook, this story unfolds into a thing of beauty. The vampires are deep, intriguing characters with hundreds of years of back story among them. The plot focuses around Brigit - a beautiful, smart, cunning, loving, and theatre-going vampire, as she infiltrates the Nazi inner circle while leaving her immortal beloved behind.

Author Sarah Jane Stratford describes how vampires come to be, what qualities make some survive for millennia, and what constitutes the vampire code of ethics in her Stratfordverse. Most of the time, Brigit and her fellow vampires kill for nourishment, and they have particular tastes. (Nazis taste bad. Figures.) But sometimes they kill out of vengeance or anger, and the lucky reader learns all about those moments - but more of the emotion behind the killing than graphic descriptions of guts and gore. (Okay, there's some guts and gore, too.) Vampires all quite literally have inner demons.

Nice accuracy in the descriptions of period details, which is something that I always notice in historical fiction.

The Midnight Guardian was a pleasure to read - fast and fun, but not fluffy. I can't wait for the sequel!

By 1940 Hitler had succeeded in killing all the vampires on the continent. He created a special hunter unit, the Nachtspeere whose mission was the vampiric genocide. However, Millennials, millennium old vampires are not easy to kill as they double in strength and other powers in their thousandth year. Only a few special hunters can kill a Millennial because each vampire has a demon inside who feeds on their hunger and gives them the skill to strike back at their enemies.

With the Millennials dead on the mainland, the British Millennial vampires send a group to Germany to prevent a human war as memories of the destruction of WWI lingers when their food supply killed one another that led to a vampire civil war. Brigit and the others plan to kill key SS men in order to prevent Hitler from occupying France. In Germany the unit is stunned by Hitler's Final Solution and hope to create enough chaos to slow down Hitler's master plan as he and his leadership teams prove they are greater monsters than vampires with what they are doing to the Jews. Brigit leaves Germany with two orphaned Jewish kids as the Nazi vampire hunters stalk her on a train ad boat on her way home to England.

Told from Brigit's perspective, readers learn through flashbacks how she was turned, how she became freed of her sire, and how she met her eternal love Eammon who waits for her back home. Their love sustains her as she rides the trains towards the Channel with the real evil in pursuit of her and her precious cargo. THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIAN is an intriguing take on what is evil as Sarah Jane Stratford makes the case that deeds not species defines malevolency.

Harriet Klausner

I don't normally read many adult novels, but every now and then, one will catch my eye. As soon as I knew that The Midnight Guardian mixed vampires and the Second World War -- two of my favourite subjects to read about -- I knew I had to give it a go. I'm so glad I did!

I love the vampire mythology of the Millennials, thousand-year-old vampires that are super strong and harder to kill. It takes a lot of hunting for me to find something different in the vampire genre, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Millennials fit into what I was looking for. Brigit is the main focus of The Midnight Guardian, and her present, as well as her past, is documented in great detail. Her soulmate Eamon recounts Brigit's early life, both human and vampire, and her existence spans hundreds of years, starting back when the Vikings were around.

The decision to set this story in the throes of WWII worried me initially. I didn't want it to be poorly executed, or to glorify that terrible period of history. Stratford doesn't take anything lightly, and takes great care in portraying the Nazis exactly as they were. Hitler is mentioned, but never featured, and I think that was the right thing to do. There's a point when fiction can blur too much with reality, making it unbelievable and distasteful, and Stratford succeeds in never crossing that line.

The Midnight Guardian is written intelligently, with a style and content suitable for the YA audience. There are a few gruesome, violent vampire scenes, but it's nothing too bad. The few sex scenes are written with taste and, while not quite as tame as what you'd find in a typical YA book, aren't overly explicit. Don't be put off by this book living on adult shelves, as it's worthy of being read by a much wider audience.

An unusual setting, clever characters and interesting vampire lore make The Midnight Guardian a fantastic debut novel. Stratford knows what she's talking about, and her love of history is engrained on every page. It's a welcome addition to the hordes of vampire stories out there, and I can't wait for the next book in the series.

4.5/5

Dracula's creator, Bram Stoker would have loved this fast-paced and breathtaking vampire story by Sarah Jane Stratford. You will race across central Europe by cover of night, in the company of a team of Millennial vampires whose lives, history and intellect span over a thousand years experience. These select and elite masterful vampires are on a mission to destroy Hitler's Third Reich and therefore prevent World War Three. The tension, secrecy and violence will have you sitting up reading all night - as the heroine of the team, Brigit whose own ancestry hails from ancient Viking Britain, hacks and slashes and sucks the blood out of all who dare stop her. But she is also demure, and dignified while caring for a very special cargo. Her powers will seduce the reader, and the books journey ends in a climatical way rewarding all those who are absorbed by the writer's visonary and creative imagination.

This story set in WWII has truly amazing characters and great historic elements. Once the characters open up I couldn't put the book down. It was a pure pleasure to read. I look forward to the next book by Ms. Stratford.

The Midnight Guardian takes us where vampire fiction has never gone before, Nazi Germany. Sarah Jane Stratford has compellingly juxtaposed events in the history and persecution of Jews in Europe (Clifford's Tower in York and the impending Holocaust in Nazi Germany) with the secretive life of the vampires of Europe in a way that gives events nearly a millenia old newness and personal drama. Brigit, the sensual heroine, finds danger and redemption in her flight from Nazi Germany, set upon by a bevy of chilling bad men bent on her destruction. There is everything here, action and violence, psychological anguish and introspection, sex and romance, but all is done with a light touch and an even pace that never lets the story drag or distracts from the main theme. Each character in the book is well-drawn, so real I felt at times like they must be people I have met, and known myself. I find myself wanting more, more, more of the stories of the vampires I've met in this book.

Sarah Jane Stratford's debut novel goes beyond the current day vampire genre through a storyline that delivers a healthy dose of history and romance as its main characters undertake a mission to impede Hitler's Third Reich.

Brigit is the heroine of the book - a millennial, or vampire whose powers have reached near invincibility over the thousand years she's lived amongst the undead. Her cohorts are equally fascinating (love double millennial Mors!) as we learn their back-stories, how they were "made" and the depth of love that even the "un-human" can encompass.

And though one of their aims is to ensure their food supply remains strong, it's impossible not to root for them. In fact, it's often easy to overlook the dark side of their inner (literally) demons and be enticed by their sexiness.

The novel is both provocative and full of intrigue as the millennials undertake their mission. What readers will be vying for, though, is not only to see that grave task achieve success, but to see Brigit reunited with her beloved Eamon.

Vampires and Nazis and Blood oh My!
This is more of a 3 3/4 star book, just not quite a 4. It took me a while to get into this book, but I really hated to see it end once I did. For some reason I never completely forgot that I was reading a book and I feel that I have to in order for it to be a 5 star book. A lot of the storyline takes place in flashbacks and I didn't find this transition to be very smooth. It takes place during the beginning of WWII as the vampires take on the Nazis with their attempt to stop another World War. They know by experience that another war will greatly affect their food supply so must undertake positions as spies to prevent this from happening. The pace really sped up at the end and I hated to put it down at this point. The book was filled with details and shows again the horror of man's inhumanity to man. I truly hope that Stratford has more books in this series as once I finished it, I immediately marked it as a reread.

This book exemplifies why it's a pity that any novel featuring a vampire is automatically pigeonholed as genre fiction and avoided by anyone for whom vampires aren't their cup of tea. Yes, the main character and her cohort are undeniably undead, but their great age provides a clever framework for exploring human nature and examining history. Mors, for example, is over two thousand years old. Looking at the rise of the Third Reich through the eyes of someone who also witnessed the rise and fall of the Roman Empire provides a novel take on leadership, power, conquest, and survival. The madness of the slaughter of innocent people due to their race, religion, ethnicity, etc. takes on a fresh perspective when condemned and resisted by characters who supposedly lost their own humanity millennia ago. Paranormal aficionados will certainly adore this book -- it gives good vampire, but anyone who loves history and a great story should not hesitate to pick it up as well.