BLOOD COLONY.

Tananarive Due. Atria. 422 pages. $25.

Tananarive Due has one of the more arresting voices in contemporary American fiction. She's a writer whose vision, on display in her best speculative work (she has also written several mysteries) rivals that of the late, great Octavia Butler, to whom Blood Colony is dedicated. This is the third installment of Due's popular ''African Immortals'' series that began with My Soul to Keep and continued with the marvelous The Living Blood, winner of a 2002 American Book Award.

Due's sequence builds upon a brilliant premise: the discovery of 59 Ethiopian men, members of a supernatural brotherhood whose immortality may have been conferred upon them through the blood of Jesus Christ, taken during the crucifixion. The blood possesses miraculous healing abilities, even for those not of the brotherhood. Just a few drops will save an ordinary human from the most gruesome injuries, and immortality can be conferred through the Life Ceremony. The Brothers can be gravely injured, though they recover within a few hours; they also can be destroyed, by exsanguination, incineration or live burial.

Dawit Wolde has the Living Blood; his wife, Jessica, is ''functionally immortal'' due to the blood ritual. Their firstborn child died in a botched attempt to confer the blood upon her. Their second-born daughter, Fana, was born with the blood and possesses the sort of supernatural powers that bring up the old ''New Messiah or Antichrist?'' debate among those of an apocalyptic bent. The extended Wolde clan -- Dawit and Jessica, along with various mortal and immortal Brothers, friends, relations and acolytes -- now lives in a secret Pacific Northwest compound, the Colony, part Rainbow Family, part Christian sect.

As Blood Colony opens, this pastoral existence is threatened by the outside world. The blood is a prime ingredient in a new drug developed by those affiliated with the Brotherhood. Called Glow, it can cure AIDS, sickle cell anemia and other blood-related illnesses. But the U.S. government and Big Pharm claim the drug is part of a terrorist conspiracy. So members of the Colony, including 17-year-old Fana and several of her outside friends, have founded a 21st century underground railroad to get Glow to those who need it most.

There are others who want Glow: the immortal adherents of Sanctus Cruor, a maleficent rival brotherhood that borrows vestments, architecture and iconography from the Catholic Church and gives ample employment to that time-honored gothic villain, an evil monk. Yet is it Glow that Sanctus Cruor desires or Fana?

All this should make for a rip-roaring neo-gothic novel, in the tradition of Anne Rice. Instead, the story gets mired in Due's hugely complex back story, with the introduction of dozens of characters and subplots that slow the narrative to a crawl. For those who stick it out, the last hundred pages finally deliver the goods, in the form of Sanctus Cruor's Chosen One, a male counterpart to the Living Blood's Fana. Here, at last, Due's myriad and tangled plotlines converge so that we get a glimpse of the big picture -- only to have the book end, jarringly.

Fortunately, there's enough of Due's obvious affection for her characters to keep one turning the pages, hoping for more. And, as always, Due, a former Miami Herald staff writer, does a remarkable job of balancing her protagonists' supernatural powers with their Christian beliefs. Readers encountering this series for the first time may feel as though they've wandered into a vast family reunion where they don't know anyone. Still, by the end even newcomers may find themselves irresistibly drawn to the members of Due's extensive, prickly clan of immortals and hopeful of an invitation for a return visit.

Elizabeth Hand reviewed this book for The Washington Post.

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