I was admittedly skeptical when I picked up Rachel Vincent's latest offering, BLOOD BOUND. Not through any fault of Vincent's own (I greatly enjoyed her well-constructed "Shifters" series) but mostly because of my own wariness of a new series (and the entirely new world that it was placed in) and the cheesy and over-wrought description on the back of my paperback copy. The Shifters series was fun, smart, and creative and I worried that a new series would leave Vincent foundering. I was happily wrong and the narrative depth of this novel shows great promise for her next works.

The world of BLOOD BOUND is true to real life with one important exception- a certain portion of the population (and it is, sadly, never specified exactly what percentage) is what is known as Skilled. Openly known to the public but officially unacknowledged by governing agencies, those who are Skilled possess inherent talents and the titles to go with them: Binders, Blinders, Seers, Readers, Trackers, and so on. The majority seem consigned to the shadowy underworld, where their talents are utilized by ruthless mafiosos, who bind their peons to them with magically-powered blood oaths. In fact, the whole novel is predicated on bindings, with childhood vows, magical brandings, declarations of love, familial loyalty and old debts building a complicated and pleasing plotline.

Olivia Warren, a Tracker, is at the center of this maelstrom of the-ties-that-bind and finds herself navigating alliances with an almost-comically divided set of magically-enforced loyalties. Also in the thick of it is Cam Caballero, her former lover, whose occasional first-person viewpoints provide the only jarring note in the novel. Their banter hits a sincere note of flirtation and affection however and certainly invests the reader in the novel's outcome. Liv is, thankfully, an independent and smart young woman, hardly the "lost in desire" twit the back of the novel 's description promises. This isn't a romance novel and it is so much the better for it.

Vincent weaves a most convincing world for her characters, managing to have cellular phone and internet use in the novel without it feeling forced or anachronistic (a rare feat). Her world is realistically complicated and the novel reveals its characters' many secrets in a series of (mostly) unforeseen twists. Despite a satisfying ending, there is a clear jumping off point for the next novel in the trilogy, as well as a few tantalizing questions to which I look forward to receiving answers. BLOOD BOUND is a strong, cohesive work founded on a unique paranormal premise and will lead nicely to the rest of the trilogy.