Tananarive Due: Blood Colony and My Soul To Take

[bibliogramma]

I'd been meaning to check out Tananarive Due's work for some time, but wasn't sure what book to try first. I ran across a blurb for Blood Colony somewhere and decided to give it a try, not realising that it was the third book in a series. Fortunately, Due's writing, characterisation and plotting are sufficiently strong that I didn't suffer from any confusion at all about who was who or what was going on.

Blood Colony and My Soul To Take are both part of Due's African Immortals series. The premise of the series is that there is a secret society of immortals, based in Africa and consisting primarily (if not exclusively) of celebate black male adherents; the blood of these immortals can heal, and when shared during the proper ritual, can confer immortality on others. There is a prophecy, and ancient texts and artefacts and all the trappings of such a society. Blood Colony introduces a handful of members of this society who have left the order, taken up 'normal' lives, married, had children, and created a new colony of immortals who are trying to help cure sickness in Africa by fronting clinics and dispensing a serum made from their blood through these clinics, quietly and without ringing any bells that might make anyone suspect their existence.

Unknown to them, there is another faction of immortals who left the main order, and who have a very different plan for the mortals of the world, a plan based on a very different interpretation of the prophecy and which rests on the marriage of a stragely gifted daughter of the Blood Colony to the son of their own leader. My Soul To Take deals with attempts by the three factions to either bring about or block this marriage, and the ultimate shape of the ancient prophesy's fulfilment.

I very much enjoyed these books, and want to go back and read the first two; I have one of them already, My Soul To Keep, but I'm still looking for thd second volume, The Living Blood.