Blood of the Lamb: A Novel of Secrets

Written by Sam Cabot

Narrated by Jason Culp

This document, dear friend, will shatter the Church…..

Reading these words in a letter in a dusty archive, Thomas Kelly is skeptical. The papers to which they refer have vanished, but Father Kelly, a Jesuit priest, doubts anything could ever have had that power—until the Vatican suddenly calls him to Rome to begin a desperate search for that very document.

Meanwhile, standing before a council of her people, Livia Pietro receives instructions: she must find a Jesuit priest recently arrived in Rome, and join his search for a document that contains a secret so shocking it has the power to destroy not only the Catholic Church, but Livia’s people as well.

As cryptic messages from the past throw Thomas and Livia into a treacherous world of art, religion, and conspiracy, they are pursued by those who would cross any line to obtain the document for themselves. Thomas and Livia must race to stop the chaos and destruction that the revelation of these secrets would create. Livia, though, has a secret of her own: She and her people are vampires.

In a sprawling tapestry that combines the religious intrigue of Dan Brown with the otherworldly terror of Stephenie Meyer, Blood of the Lamb is an unforgettable journey into an unthinkable past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Aug 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781442363496

Reviews for Blood of the Lamb

[Billie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Blood of the Lamb
by Sam Cabot
Fantasy Supernatural Vampire
Scribd Audio

American priest Thomas Kelly is asked by a friend and mentor who is now working at the Vatican to locate a missing centuries-old document stolen in the 19th century by a poet during a war. This document is rumored that in the wrong hands would/could destroy the church. (Those easily offended by religious contradiction should not read this.)

Just as he started his research Livia Pietro, an Italian art historian, 'joins' him in the Vatican library when she 'sees' him looking at the works of this poet. Unknowingly to him, she was sent there by another party to help him search for this document, to prevent it from coming to light. But there are other factions who want this document to become known so that those of Livia's kind, (vampires) can walk free.

The chapters were split up between different characters in the story, but most were of Thomas and Livia, but some of the plot/mystery was given away when the chapters focused on the other characters and what they were doing.

Just as the blurb said, this book reminded me so much of 'The Da Vinci Code', with a lot of religion theory and history, and at times it was irritatingly repetitive. But it was a good story overall, most of the story taking place over a two or three-day span, so there was a lot of running around.

It wasn't a bad story, other than the religious/history lectures that became so monotonous I wanted to fast-forward to the story. Some of it was needed, but some were just to add words.

Not your typical vampire story. Not scary, with only a little blood, and a few deaths, but not too overly described. I think it would be acceptable for readers as young as 16 to read.

This is the first of a two-book series, and while I read the 2nd book in 2014 as an ARC, I might revisit it.

3 Stars

[ecw0647 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Peter DeVries was a very popular writer who contributed many stories to the New Yorker in the fifties and sixties and who wrote several very funny novels. This autobiographical novel describes the growth to maturity of Don Wanderhope, member of a strictly Calvinist Dutch Reform family, whose brother becomes a heretic, whose father becomes addicted to drink and goes insane, and whose wife commits suicide after giving him a child whom he loves deeply. At age eleven, his daughter contracts leukemia, initially does quite well, but then succumbs to a staph infection in the hospital.

Wanderhope - I suspect the name is no accidental choice - in grief stricken anger rails against God and man. "I made a tentative conclusion. It seemed from all of this that uppermost among human joys is the negative one of restoration. Not going to the stars, but learning that one may stay where one is. It was shortly after the evening in question that I had a taste of that truth on a scale that enabled me to put my finger on it." The happiest moment of his life comes when the doctor lets him know that his daughter will be all right - a mistake as it turns out. "The fairy would not become a gnome. We could break bread in peace again, my child and I. The greatest experience open to man then, is the recovery of the commonplace."

The book has many humorous moments and profound insights, as Wanderhope struggles with religion as he tries to deal with the death of his only child. "I believe that man must learn to live without those consolations called religious, which his own intelligence must by now have told him belong to the childhood of the race. Philosophy really can give us nothing permanent to believe in either. It is too rich in answers; each canceling out the rest. The quest for meaning is foredoomed. Human life means nothing. But that is not to say that it is not worth living. What does a Debussy arabesque mean, or a rainbow, or a rose? A man delights in all of these knowing himself to be no more. A wisp of music and haze of dreams dissolving against the sun. Man has only his own two feet to stand on his own human trinity to see him through: reason, courage and grace and the first plus the second equals the third."

[kszym-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first half and second halves of this book seem like entirely separate books - it took me a couple of chapters to get in this, printed 1961, with the old book smell and the weird stain and that font that was so popular midcentury that just invites skimming, but I'm glad I gave it the time. This book is gorgeous. It's a semi-autobiographical account of the author's struggles with religion over the course of his life, and it ends up being kind of a defense of the idea that not everything can or should be redeemed - "Time heals nothing - which should make us the better able to minister." The author seems to give up on the possibility of satisfaction, but he continues anyway. "'Let there be light,' we cry, and only the dawn breaks." Compassion is possible, it's beautiful, but it's all. We can never be consoled, and maybe the worst thing is the waste that goes into trying to console ourselves, or trying to convince ourselves that there is something to console us. But there's no point in being angry about that. We can bear our own witness.

[kirstiecat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a book I started to read at the end of the last school year in June and had a really difficult time with because of the very personal nature of the subject matter. (The forward by Jeffrey Frank gets into this quite a bit, speaking about how De Vries was usually known for writing more comedic novels and how this is perhaps the closest he got to autobiography with his own life's tragedies.


But, to be fair, this book is really more balanced than I thought it would be. Most of the book doesn't dwell too much on tragedies and loss, though it begins and ends with it full circle. However, the middle is mainly filled with philosophizing about religion and medicine as well as the first person protagonist's womanizing and overall experiences being young and a little frivolous with life's experiences.


I think those who want a glimpse of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s and also who are curious to know what the religious and medical thinking was like in the area will not be disappointed. The conversations are just lengthy enough for a decent taste but not so lengthy that they get tedious.


Memorable Quotes:

pg. 110 "Death is the commonest thing in the universe."

pg. 111 "You believe what you must in order to stave off the conviction that it's all a tale told by an idiot."

pg. 117 "Ninety percent of the universe is missing."

pg. 208 "Prove to me there is a God and I will really begin to despair."

pg. 214 "Thus it seemed to me that what you were up against in Stein was not logic rampant, but frustrated faith. He could not forgive God for not existing."

pg. 220 "I sat mesmerized in my own seat, transfixed in perhaps the most amazing midnight I had ever lived through, yet one possessing, in the dreamy dislocations of whit it formed a part, a weird, bland naturalness like that of a Chirico landscape, full of shadows infinitely longer than the objects casting them."

pg. 228 "We will seek out the leaves turning in the little praised bushes and the unadvertised trees."

pg. 237 "It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate. The scattered particles of self-love, wood, thrush calling, homework sums, broken nerves, rag dolls, one Phi Beta Kappa key, gold stars, lamplight smiles, night cries, and the shambles of contemplation-are collected for a split moment like scraps of shrapnel before they explode."