Sands of Time by Christine Church

Egyptian alien vampires.  It's a thing.  I Googled it.

Once you get past that, this was actually a really intriguing novella.

It's formatted in an interesting way.  Supposed ancient texts were found and are in the process of being translated.  These novellas are the translations.  This part of the book was incredibly well done.  We have an introduction explaining the founding and translations of the texts.  I had to take a minute and go to the back of the book to find out if this was something that really happened and just had fictionalized texts, or if this part was fiction too.  I'm not telling what I found out.  The point is, it was written well enough that I wasn't really sure.  It's believable.

The main character in the book is Kesi, who is an Egyptian alien vampire.  I'm still working on getting past that part.  This first novella is her story, spanning centuries.  It's a story of heartbreak and fear, a struggle with who she is and an ever-changing world.  Church did an amazing job of getting inside Kesi's head and letting us both see and feel what she did.

Vampires normally run one of two ways.  Either they're horrific, bloodsucking fiends (Kozeniewski) or they're romanticized twits (*shiver*  Twilight).  Here, Church has taken a different approach.  They begin as pacifists who just want to be happy.  Live forever and let live for awhile.  Though it wasn't the typical vampire that I really enjoy, I didn't really hate them.  If only they'd been made hippies!  Then I could really add them to the like list!

The second book in the series, The Early Scrolls, was just released this month.  I haven't read it, but I'm actually going to add it to my 'to read' list.  Even though I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around Egyptian alien vampires (somebody should make a tongue twister out of that), Church's compelling storytelling ability as well as the connection I built with Kesi in the first book is enough to make me desire it.