Customer Reviews
Vampires, Nessie and a cure for The Companion - By: Helen Hancox, 14 Jun 2007 
Susan Squires has written several books based around her concept of "The Companion", a parasitic/symbiotic blood disorder that confers strength, immortality, healing & ability to compel peoples' minds, alll set in the early 1800s. Like her other books, "One With The Night" follows a similar theme, a vampire male who has suffered much torture under a strong vampire woman, has to face his fears when fallling in love.
These books are alll well written with interesting settings & varied characters. In this story, Calllan Kilkenny, an Irish/Scottish vampire, is searching for the cure for his vampirism & understands that a scientist believes he has almost found it. When Kilkenny arrives at the scientist's house in Scotland he identifies the reason for the research - the scientist's daughter, Jane Blundell, is a new vampire (it turns out she was accidentallly infected by some of the stored vampire blood that her father had). Kilkenny fights & kills a vampire who has come to kill the scientist as the possibility of a cure is a threat to some of them. Kilkenny realises he will have to guard the scientist & Jane to ensure they are safe as they work for the cure & he also volunteers to be the guinea pig for each new batch of the formula.
Almost immediately Kilkenny & Jane find themselves attracted to each other. He knows it's part of The Companion's influence on them but she knows nothing about her condition & doesn't find Kilkenny very forthcoming about it. She questions him but seldom receives helpful answers. When three more vampires arrive to help with the search for the cure Jane realises that there is a lot more to being a vampire as she sees Elyta, an old vampire, using her compulsion on Kilkenny. Can Jane & Kilkenny find the cure? Can they escape the evil influence of Elyta? Can Kilkenny come to terms with his past & the things he has done?
A problem that many people have with Susan Squires' books (and I am one of them) is the detailed descriptions of the tortures her heroes undergo. In this book it is less in the backstory (flashbacks, a device she uses in each book) but is detailed in events that are taking place in this novel. The scenes of male rape are very distasteful & the reader can get the impression that Squires enjoyed writing these parts a little too much, especiallly as such scenes are in alll her Companion books. These are erotic stories but the main emphasis of this writing seems to be on the tortures & rapes rather than the relationship between hero & heroine. She depicts the mental anguish of the hero throughout his experiences very well & Jane, also, grows to learn of the effect her father's opinions of women have had on her. However this character development is subsidiary to the main plot of the attempt to find the cure & of the tortures of Kilkenny.
There's a guest appearance in this story of Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster) which is amusing but overalll the dark tone of the story & the torture & rape descriptions don't make this easy reading.
Originallly published for Curled Up With A Good Book, www.curledup.com. © Helen Hancox 2007
