I rather enjoyed the novel. I have read all of the books inside of the House of Night series, and it was comforting to have a novel to turn to when I was confused about what was going on in the series. Also, one of the characters, Damien, continuously references the handbook, so it was nice to see what he was talking about. I thought it was very interesting how the authors were able to tie in ancient history, and tweak it, of course, to make it seem like vampires do exist (for example, the novel describes Cleopatra and tells a convincing story about her life as a vampyre). I thought it was a great companion and I cannot wait to see if the authors create another handbook.