Kim has done her best to bury her love for Alec behind the routine of a plebeian teaching job in the Pacific Northwest, when a chance encounter with a spirit has her reevaluating her choices. Kim abandoned Dobrenica, leaving her cousin Ruli a clear field to marry Alec and thus provide the magical separation necessary to the security of the nation, but something has gone wrong, Dobrenica is still tied to the mundane world.

She arrives home to learn her mother and grandmother are in London, with her father soon to follow, visiting Milo, the former leader of the unique and magical country. With the warnings of the spirit ringing in her soul, what can Kim do but to accompany her dad and see what has happened to skew things so badly.

Sherwood Smith picks up her tale in Book two of the Coronets and Steel series very soon after Book one, Coronets and Steel. leaves off. I really suggest reading these in order. The beautifully Byzantine plot of the series demands full knowledge before immersion into book 2, BLOOD SPIRIT.

That small codicil aside, BLOOD SPIRIT is a fully satisfying read, a tale to be savored. The mess that Dobrenican politics has become challenges many of the characters to use strengths previously hidden while Kim's American family becomes caught up in more of the action. The tangled and engrossing plot (involving vampires, ghostly animals and many of the characters readers loved in the first book) leads inexorably to a stunningly delicious conclusion.