Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: Drinker of Blood
SERIES: SPECTR Series 2, #3
AUTHOR: Jordan L. Hawk
NARRATOR: Brad Langer
PUBLISHER: Widdershins Press
LENGTH: 4 hours, 17 minutes
RELEASE DATE: March 23, 2017
BLURB:
An outbreak of demon attacks across Charleston has worn SPECTR agent John Starkweather to the bone. Now a new threat faces his team: a demon with bullet-and bite-proof skin, which can’t be stopped by ordinary means.
John’s only solace comes in the form of his lovers: Caleb Jansen and the vampire spirit Gray. Caleb and Gray have their own problems, however. Unbeknownst to John, they’ve been tracking a mysterious entity across the city. And after they finally come face-to-face with their quarry, nothing will ever be the same.
REVIEW:
From being a strong and united trio our guys are slowly gliding apart. Caleb is unhappy at SPECTR, feeling trapped into a life he did not chose and would not have chosen had he had a choice. He loves John, but John doesn’t really understand, not truly. Neither does Gray, often referring to Caleb’s wish for normalcy for “mortal foolishness”. Gray for his part is restless and getting fed up with their boss at SPECTR. He wants to hunt, and he’s fast losing patience with everything going on at the office.
John has his hands full. There are outbreaks of demon attacks all over town, and they seem to be never ending. And the new threat the team is facing seems to be impenetrable for everything he and Zahira throws at it. Caleb and Gray on their part have secretly been hunting the entity that has been following them for the past few books. They keep their investigation from John in order to spare him some trouble at SPECTR.
The relationship between Caleb/Gray and John are put under more strain than before. They are all still figuring out how to make it work, and being so different it’s not coming easy. Then again nothing worth having never is. The love between them is still there, and it’s strong, but they will have to start fighting for their relationship soon if they want to stay together.
I’m not sure what to think in regards to the paranormal entity Caleb and Gray hunted (and found). It can be interesting and good, but I do have an uneasy feeling that it will cause some major issues down the line.
Brad Langer truly adds to the sense of place of this world. I love how he makes the creatures sound creepy and portrays the fear of the survivors and witnesses. One of the most heartfelt moments of this book was when Caleb’s new friends turned their backs on him. Caleb’s sadness of having lost even that little semblance of normalcy, something outside of John, Gray and SPECTR. Equally heart-breaking was when John found out Caleb and Gray kept secrets from him. Langer made you feel all of it and in detail.
The recording of this book had some technical issues that I haven’t really encountered for the others in this series (or the previous one). I love to live in my audiobooks and experience the world alongside the characters. I don’t like RL disturbances (though, when you’re at work I guess you can’t really do much about that), and I also don’t like it when I’m forced to focus on the audio recording instead of the story. And that happened here a few times in this book, with repeated sentences, but more importantly, re-recorded longer sections that didn’t fit in with the rest. It threw me out of the story and made me wish for the smooth recordings from the other books.
By now I fully admit to being seriously addicted to this series and spending all the time I can in this incredible world.
RATING: 
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