Book Review: Blood Infernal (The Order of the Sanguines), a Novel

Blood Infernal (The Order of the Sanguines) by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

Final book in the trilogy series of The Order of the Sanguines. It all start with The Blood Gospel, then Innocent Blood and now Blood Infernal. Each book contain about 450-500 pages, so, if this series is not that good or average, I would’ve quit long time ago (I once tempted to quit and proceed with Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design). But yeah, this series is superb! I don’t know much about Rebecca Cantrell but James Rollins is for me the best author of thriller, mystery, science and history. Rollins is a genius that can blend all of it into a novel, an inventive storyteller.

In this series, the authors skilfully combine historical elements of Christianity (though highly speculative, this is a work of friction after all), science, and love into a wonderful story that is action-packed and definitely had tug my emotions. This frictional story revolves around the three main characters, the Trio of Prophesy: Erin Granger, an archaeologist, the Woman of Learning; Jordan Stone, a military forensic, the Warrior of Man; and Rhun Korza, a Vatican sanguinist-priest, the Knight of Christ. Together they fight evils, spill blood and discover many mysteries and puzzles that interconnected with one another. In short, they have to save the world together.

But not that straightforward and easily predicted kind. The story is filled with betrayals, twisted plots, scandals, secrets and weird creatures. First they discovered The Blood Gospel a tome that presumably written by Christ’s own blood. And then, the adventure goes worse from then on. From Rome to Italy, Bohemia to Russia, Israel to Nepal, even the Garden of Eden. From ‘strigoi’ sort of vampire-like creature, ‘blasphemare’ an unholy union between strigoi and beast, werewolf half-man half-beast, and ‘sanguine’ strigoi turned good that doesn’t feed by human blood but by the Blood of Christ that is performed in the Holy Communion.

Then there are also some controversial characters: Eliezer the Priest, the Apostle Peter, Cardinal Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh de Payens founders of the Order of Templar, John Dee and Edward Kelly the Alchemists, Saint Francis of Assisi, Countess Elisabeth Bathory, German Nazi’s secrets (the Arians mythological superace), the Army of Light, Archangel Michael, the Destroyer only named as Iscariot, the 666-demons-filled Legion, and the Prince of Darkness Lucifer.

The best frictional trilogy novels I ever read! Superb!

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.