Descendant: Chronicles of the Ipswich Witch (Volume 1)

Miranda Bachman
CreateSpace (2010)
ISBN 9781449995362
Reviewed by Tracey Rock for Reader Views (08/10)

Raven Wolfe, mother of four grown children, now nearing eighty has lived a nice, comfortable life.  These days, she spends her time writing poetry and enjoying the solitude of her house and her surroundings.  Even though she is alone, not once has Raven ever felt as if she was being watched.  Yet, the truth is, Raven has been watched and guarded over since she was nine-years-old.  As a vampire, Alistair Arcos has spent almost five centuries in search of a companion.  Seeing Raven as a young child, he knew at first sight, that she was his soul mate.  Out of respect and love, Alistair waited for her to live a good full mortal life before he came to her.  Their connection is almost immediate. Now that Raven and Alistair are together, they had no idea that their entire relationship was carefully and elaborately orchestrated by Cleona Conant, the Ipswich Witch.  Since her death in 1721, Cleona has been transferring her spirit into other bodies.  In order for Cleona to reach a point of immortality, her greatest desire, she must enter the body of a vampire.  So far, her attempts were futile.  So, Cleona’s plan now is to create a vampire from within her own lineage by which she could permanently reside herself.  Cleona’s plan has now come to fruition.  The host that she seeks is ready for her transformation to immortality.  That is, unless Raven and Alistair can stop her.

“Descendant: Chronicles of the Ipswich Witch” started out slow and took me quite a while to connect with the characters.  With all the vampire stories out there, this one made me a bit uncomfortable as I was reading the story and picturing this vampire biting the neck of my grandmother.  After all, Raven was almost eighty-years-old when she was turned.  Something seemed wrong with that.  Since Raven was turned into a vampire early on in the story, I felt that the book had no substance in the middle and could have easily been skipped in favor of the last few chapters that held my interest long enough to finally get what was really going on in the story.  I did not realize until after I read the book that this was book one of a series (book two due out in 2011), which would explain the fluff that was inserted.  If I take out the fluff, then I would say that the story is actually pretty good and unique by today’s standards of vampire story lines. 

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