Blood Colony

Acclaimed for seven novels, ranging from supernatural thrillers to historical fiction, which have garnered her a multitude of fans and awards, Tananarive Due now imagines the story of an ancient group of immortals — a hidden African clan that has survived for more than a thousand years — facing one of the most challenging issues of our time: the AIDS/HIV pandemic.

There's a new drug on the street: Glow. Said to heal almost any illness, it is distributed by an Underground Railroad of drug peddlers. But what gives Glow its power? Its main ingredient is blood — the blood of immortals. A small but powerful colony of immortals is distributing the blood, slowly wiping out the AIDS epidemic and other diseases around the world.

Meet Fana Wolde, seventeen years old, the only immortal born with the Living Blood. She can read minds, and her injuries heal immediately. When her best friend, a mortal, is imprisoned by Fana's family, Fana helps her escape — and together they run away from Fana's protected home in Washington State to join the Underground Railroad.

But Fana has more than her parents to worry about: Glow peddlers are being murdered by a violent, hundred-year-old sect with ties to the Vatican. Now, when Fana is most vulnerable, she is being hunted to fulfill an ancient blood prophecy that could lead to countless deaths.

While her people search for Fana and race to unravel the unknown sect's mysterious origins, Fana must learn to confront the deadly forces — or she and everyone she loves will die.

"This profoundly moving third Blood book (after 2001's The Living Blood), set in 2015, finds that beneath the seemingly endless conflict in the Middle East is another, secret war waged over the drug Glow, made from magical blood that can heal any illness and even bestow eternal life. Psychic teen Fana Wolde, the daughter of 500-year-old assassin Dawit Wolde, was born with this 'living blood' running through her veins. The Life Brothers, Ethiopian immortals who believe the living blood first came from Christ, think Fana is a deity. When she escapes their American compound, wanting to control her destiny and dispense her healing blood via a complex underground railroad, the Life Brothers and her parents race to protect her from the Italian immortals of the Sanctus Cruor, false priests who want Fana to fulfill a terrible prophecy. Due brings Fana's complex and passionate story to life with her trademark flair. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Tananarive Due has one of the more arresting voices in contemporary American fiction. She's a writer whose vision, on display in her best speculative work (she's also written several mysteries) rivals that of the late, great Octavia Butler, to whom "Blood Colony" is dedicated. This is the third installment of her popular "African Immortals" series that began with "My Soul to Keep" (1997) and continued... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) with the marvelous "The Living Blood" (winner of a 2002 American Book Award).

Due's sequence builds upon a brilliant premise: the discovery of 59 Ethiopian men, members of a supernatural brotherhood whose immortality may have been conferred upon them through the blood of Jesus Christ, taken during the Crucifixion. The Blood possesses miraculous healing abilities even for those not of the Brotherhood. Just a few drops will save an ordinary human from the most gruesome injuries, and immortality can be conferred through the Life Ceremony. The Brothers themselves can be gravely injured, though they recover within a few hours; they also can be destroyed, by exsanguination, incineration or living burial.

The first two books featured beautifully observed characters, generous helpings of African myth and lore, African American Christianity, references to historical settings and events (slavery in the American South, Ethiopia's 19th-century war with Italy) and, best of all, one of those mortal/immortal pairings that provide a sexy frisson whenever the demands of the mundane world threaten to bog things down.

Dawit Wolde has the Living Blood; his wife, Jessica, is "functionally immortal" due to the Blood ritual. Their firstborn child died in a botched attempt to confer the Blood upon her. Their second-born daughter, Fana, was born with the Blood and possesses the sort of supernatural powers that bring up the old "New Messiah or Antichrist?" debate among those of an apocalyptic bent. The extended Wolde clan — Dawit and Jessica, along with various mortal and immortal Brothers, friends, relations and acolytes, now live in a secret Pacific Northwest compound, the Colony, part Rainbow Family, part Christian sect.

As "Blood Colony" opens, this pastoral existence is threatened by the outside world. The Blood is a prime ingredient in a new drug developed by those affiliated with the Brotherhood. Called Glow, it can cure AIDS, sickle cell anemia and other blood-related illnesses. But the U.S. government and Big Pharm claim the drug is part of a terrorist conspiracy. So members of the Colony, including 17-year-old Fana and several of her outside friends, have founded a 21st-century underground railroad to get Glow to those who need it most.

There are others who want Glow: the immortal adherents of Sanctus Cruor, a maleficent rival brotherhood that borrows vestments, architecture and iconography from the Catholic Church and gives ample employment to that time-honored gothic villain, an evil monk. Yet is it Glow that Sanctus Cruor desires or Fana herself?

All this should make for a rip-roaring neo-gothic novel, in the tradition of Anne Rice. Instead, the story gets mired in Due's hugely complex back story, with the ceaseless introduction of dozens of characters and subplots slowing the narrative to a crawl. It's as though a season's worth of story was crammed into a single, hastily written cliffhanging episode of a show like "Buffy" or "Lost." Motives are left undeveloped; characters are introduced only to disappear. Glow's miraculous properties and network of altruistic suppliers amount to little more than a blood-red herring (though they promise to play a central part in the next book).

For those who stick it out, the last hundred pages finally deliver the goods, in the form of Sanctus Cruor's Chosen One, a male counterpart to the Living Blood's Fana. Here, at last, Due's myriad and tangled plotlines converge so that we get a glimpse of the big picture — only to have the book end, jarringly. Stay tuned, folks!

Fortunately, there's enough of Due's obvious affection for her characters to keep one turning the pages, hoping for more. Fana is nicely drawn, as is her beloved grandmother. And, as always, Due does a remarkable job of balancing her protagonists' supernatural powers with their Christian beliefs, an impressive feat that gives her storytelling a sturdy, this-could-really-happen appeal. Readers encountering this series for the first time in "Blood Colony" may feel as though they've wandered into a vast family reunion where they don't know anyone. Still, by the end even newcomers may find themselves irresistibly drawn to the members of Due's extensive, prickly clan of immortals and hopeful of an invitation for a return visit.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Hand, whose most recent novel, 'Generation Loss,' is a finalist for the first Shirley Jackson award, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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There's a new drug on the street: Glow. Said to heal almost any illness, its main ingredient is blood--the blood of immortals. A small but powerful underground railroad of immortals is distributing the blood, slowly wiping out the AIDS epidemic.