Dark Moon: The Blood Altar Volumes 2 and 3 Reviews

Sooha was supposed to have a blissful life at Decelis Academy, where nobody knew her secret and couldn’t accuse her of being a vampire. But it only took five minutes for Sooha to get caught using her power: super strength.

Thankfully Heli and the rest of his friends are super cool with it as they too hold special powers. As soon as the boys meet Sooha, their group becomes tight, and they bring her into their fold. The only issue is that Sooha hates vampires, and Heli and his friends are the monsters she hates. However, vampires are not the only monsters that come out at night, as werewolves exist too, and as you know, vampires and werewolves never get along. Things become more complicated when Sooha’s two groups of friends belong to those supernatural species, and they can’t avoid fighting each other whenever they come in contact, which is mostly thanks to Sooha.

They all wish to protect her and keep their supernatural identity a secret, but a threat from the past won’t allow it. Dardan has set his eyes on Sooha, and he doesn’t hesitate to send his minions to abduct her. When they fail, it is his turn to show himself and create chaos in the protagonists’ lives. To protect her, vampires and werewolves fight together but in doing so, they end up revealing their secret to Sooha.

It’s up to her now to decide what she wants to do with the guys’ secrets, and discover if her hate for vampires supersedes her newfound friendship.

We left Volume 1 with Sooha being attacked by vampires and Heli, Shion, Jino, Jaan, Solon, Noa and Jakah coming to her rescue just in time. It’s due to this attack that they found out the attacking vampires were aiming for Sooha specifically. They don’t know what this means yet, but the readers won’t need to wait much longer to figure it out either.

In Volumes 2 and 3, a lot of truths come to light as to who the guys are, but especially who Sooha is and why she affects them the way she does. Their connection transcends time (time travelling might have been mentioned) and life. Sooha saved them once, and now it’s their turn to save her life because Dardan will do anything in his power to get his hands on Sooha. What exactly he wants to do with her is still to be confirmed, but it gives a nefarious, life-threatening vibe.

There’s a lot that happens in these two volumes, and I think it’s been rushed quite a bit. There isn’t really a mystery component which would leave the readers guessing. The narrator is omniscient, so we already know more than the characters, but as to what we don’t know, we don’t have to wait long to find out. I believe having a slower pace would have benefitted the manhwa to also allow the characters further chances to develop.

Sooha has never made it a secret that she despises vampires, and more than once she has dug her own grave when ranting about her hatred in front of the guys (of course without knowing who they are). However, when she discovers her new friends’ drinking habits, she doesn’t stay scared for long. They just need to save her from the wannabe abductor for her to change her mind and accept them.

With their secret out in the open, the guys can breathe a little more easily now that they know Sooha will not run away from them. However, a person from their past brings up truths that they don’t want to believe about who they are, especially about Sooha. The arrival of Dardan, who shows himself as an enemy right away, hastens their decision as to who to believe.

The series keeps the upbeat storytelling that we found in the first volume, even with the scenes that could be considered gory if this weren’t a shojo series. The story is a bit clichéed, but I wonder if by the end of it Sooha will pick her love interest or if the authors will not give one to her. As the main male characters are based on the K-pop group Enhypen, K-pop fans will know that there are strict rules for dating when in a boy band. Will the same rules apply to their manhwa representation or will Sooha pick one of them?

Dark Moon: The Blood Altar is a collaboration between Webtoon and Hybe, the entertainment company at which Enhypen are signed to. The English serialisation can be found on Webtoon, while the print edition is published by Ize Press. Volume 4 was released in September.

Our review copy from Ize Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.