Author: Clay Griffith & Susan Griffith 

Princess Adele struggles with a life of marriage and obligation as her Equatorian Empire and their American Republic allies stand on the brink of war against the vampire clans of the north. However, the alliance's horrific strategy for total victory drives Adele to abandon her duty and embark on a desperate quest to keep her nation from staining its hands with genocide. Reunited with her great love, the mysterious adventurer known to the world as the Greyfriar, Adele is pursued by her own people as well as her vengeful husband, senator Clark. With the human alliance in disarrray, Prince Cesare, lord of the British vampire clan, seizes the initiative and strikes at the very heart of Equatoria.
As Adele labors to bring order to her world, she learns more about the strange powers she exhibited in the north. Her teacher, Mamoru, leads a secret cabal of geomancers who believe Adele is the one who can touch the vast power of the Earth that surges through ley lines and wells up at the rifts where the lines meet. These energies are the key to defeating the enemy of mankind, and if Princess Adele could ever bring this power under her command, she could be death to vampires. But such a victory will also cost the life of Adele's beloved Greyfriar.
The Rift Walkeris the second book in a trilogy of high adventure and alternative history. Combining rousing pulp action with steampunk style, the Vampire Empire series brings epic politcal themes to life within a story of heartbreaking romance, sacrifice, and heroism.

I enjoyed The Rift Walker much more than I did the first book in the series. I just felt liked things moved a lot quicker out of the gate. I would say my only argument against this book was that there was so much more politics involved in it than the prvious book, at least in my opinion. But I will get into that later on in the review. This is such a rich story, not only the settings but the characters also. Clay and Susan do an amazing job drawing you into the story, and getting you involved with everything that is going with the characters.

If you've read the first book, you will know how the story left off. I am not going to go into an extreme amount of detail as I don't want to spoil anything that happened up to this point. The story is extremely engrossing though, You're introduced to more vampire clans, and learn a lot more about what exactly is going on between the humans and vampires. But in book two you start to see some backstabbing going on and some deals being made that could really mess things up for the people of Equatoria. And it's up to Adele, Gareth, Anhalt and others to try and prevent things from happening. Because if things are allowed to play out like a few people would wish them to, it would ruin them all.

A lot of the characters from book one are back, even Cesare.. who I still hate. You learn more about Adele and Gareth, as you would expect. And as I mentioned above, you're introduced to some new vampires throughout the story, and quite honestly I didn't really care for them all that much. They are the type of vampires you can come to expect from this series, Clay and Susan really know how to write their vampires.. some of the darker ones you will come across. Which is a good thing though, because that is how I feel vampires should be written. There are also a few other characters which you learn quite a bit more about such as Simon who is Adeles brother. He plays a really important part in this book. You see Senator Clark, which is Adele's husband, or so he claims but there might be a few problems with that, which is all I will say. I really enjoy all of these characters, even the ones I dislike. They all add something awesome to the story and help make it an enjoyable read.

The ending was pretty epic, to say the least. I love how it wraps up focusing more on two characters in particular. One of which you might not be expecting, but I was pleased with how this book was wrapped up. And don't even get me started with the epilogue, I want to know what they are up to so badly. It's going to be really interesting to see where things go in The Kingmakers which is book three of the series. And just by the title, I expect that we will be seeing a lot more of the politics and drama. But with everything else that you have going on throughout the books that stuff easily becomes bearable.

I would highly suggest reading this series if you haven't though. Keep in mind that it is an adult series, considering the vast majority of my reviews are young adult. But I really feel like this series could easily appeal to young adult readers, at least older teens and up. It's a lot darker than most of the books you'd see in young adult, but I can think of a few that could be comparable so it's not bad by any means. I really hope that you'll decide to check it out though, make sure to check out my review of book one "The Greyfriar" if you haven't yet.

Thank you to Pyr for providing me with a copy of this book for review.