The fourth and latest novel in Hambly's vampire series featuring Jame Asher (late of His Majesty's Intelligence Service), his formidable young wife Lydia, and their strange alliance with the five-hundred-year-old vampire Don Simon Ysidro.
It is October 1912 and the Ashers, with their infant daughter and servants, have journeyed to the ancient capital Peking, in the newborn Republic of China, at the behest of Jamie's old friend and mentor, Dr. Solomon Karlebach, to investigate the rumored presence of the mindless Undead known as the Others, in an old abandoned mine is the hills west of the city.
The Ashers arrive to discover that Don Simon has anticipated them and is already in Peking, trying to make common cause with the vampires of the city. For even vampires fear the Others, who cannot be controlled, and whose blood infects both the living and the Undead on contact.
Jamie and Lydia find themselves caught in a web of conflicting forces: between Ysidro and Karlebach, between erstwhile enemies (the Japanese, the Germans) and devious friends (the British), between Chinese gangs, the corrupt Republic, the Communist insurgents, and the foreign Powers.. In the increasingly chaotic city, everyone is maneuvering for advantage in a game in which the only rule is to win at any cost.
And somewhere in the labyrinth of streets and alleys a great deal of power is riding on a very dangerous game indeed, involving vampires who have become the Magistrates of Hell, and a plot to sell the services of the mindless Undead as weapons of war.
Hambly has brewed another potent batch of history and the supernatural.
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