The Young Blood Trilogy tells the story of a group of children who, at various points in their youth, are able to temporarily turn themselves into vampires using a special potion. They see this as something fun, going around and actually murdering people. While they know that what they’re doing is wrong, they are too immature to understand the consequences of their actions, and they enjoy getting away with it. As they get older, these consequences begin catching up with them, and they have to deal with the fallout.

The trilogy opens with Young Blood, set in 1983 in Augusta, Georgia, a city that, while somewhat large, still retains some small-town tendencies and southern values. As the mysterious vampire attacks continue to plague the city, many residents, including the authorities, try to be in denial about what is happening. The children, meanwhile, must do their best to avoid being found out, to keep the secret safe. At the center of the narrative is Ray Young, who relates the tale from an unspecified point later in life, aware of the magnitude of their crimes and slowly revealing the details to the reader. The second volume, Blood Loss, expands the narrative beyond Ray and his friends, focusing more on the victims, the survivors, and other people affected by the far-reaching consequences of the young vampires’ horrible deeds. In the final installment, Forever Young, Ray, now a teenager, tries to make up for his past and eliminate the vampires he unwittingly helped to unleash, but things are complicated as he finds himself caught up in a twisted romance with one of them. Nothing is as black and white as it seems, and Ray must fight against evil on several fronts, from within and as well as without. As things come to their inevitable conclusion, what he finds is unlike anything he ever expected.

While much of the trilogy focuses on children, this is not in fact a children’s story. It is aimed at mature readers, and were this a movie, it would be rated R, mostly for violence, language, and sex. It crosses a few genres: horror, urban fantasy, historical fiction, perhaps more. Epic in scale and length, The Young Blood Trilogy delivers a thrilling saga of terror, youthful recklessness, nostalgia, and regret.