The main main action in this novel begins with a young man looking for his lost twin. The good doctor Remy Van Buren is clean-cut and wholesome, whilst his brother has lived a life of vice and dissipation before vanishing. But is he still alive?
Remy Van Buren intends to find out and the trail leads to an ancient mansion known as Ten Points. The inhabitants, however, are less than forthcoming about what might have happened to his twin. He is to find that he has reopened quite a can of worms. What secrets do the various famy members have to hide?
Meanwhile vampire mistress of the house Flannery discovers that her old enemy and maker Katerina has been boarding all along in the top lot of the house, unknown to her - clearly with scores to settle.
This novel employs many of the tropes of the both both ancient and contemporary: the House of Usher-type decaying mansion where tragedy and mysterious deaths dog the generations. There are whole storeys where no one dare enter for the untold horrors that await in the shadows, the sightings of ghosts, soul-possessing demons and of course, vampires.
Here is a family where no one seems to like each other much and certainly, among the vampires among there are the usual bonds and ties of century-long feuds, power struggles for absolute control over another and betrayal. This all actually serves to make vampire existence seem pretty dreary: this is all about dysfunction at its toxic best.
The writer does not exactly parody all these well-worn ideas, but does flirt with these alongside an awareness of more contemporary trends: there is the paedophile music teacher, Goth kids who are almost vampirised one minute, released from that the next.
And if that is not enough, the action goes all Science Fictiony at the end! It seems the mansion holds secrets to travel into alternate space/time continuums at the very end too, as the reader is sucked into a vortex into an earlier time, but with the same characters!
All very disorientating, though it did seem rather strange earlier on that a modern USA would have no idea what a vampire actually is.
So this novel gets plenty of marks for inventiveness though, if not just a little mind-bending in its play with different tropes. No doubt it will keep its readership keen for the next instalment in the series, as many answers don't get solved in this instalment.