A review by littoface
The Blood Doctor by Barbara Vine

2.0

The topic was certainly interesting and the book makes an attempt to thread the current age with the past, but the pacing is completely off. The book trudges along so slowly that it's hard to maintain an interest. A number of themes are very deliberately and unnecessarily repeated (blood blood blood!), every attractive female apparently resembles the narrator's wife, and a huge number of characters and names make it hard to keep up at times. If you are observant it isn't difficult to figure out the big reveal about a quarter of the way through the book.

If the story had been told in about half the length, it would have been great. As it stands, The Blood Doctor requires some patience to get through.