Brings little that’s new to the world of literary vampires, but its unconventionality should leave readers with fanged...
Grayson’s debut comedy trails a relatively young vampire helping his high school crush—the woman who turned him—stop a powerful old vampire with plans for world domination.
When Josh Blackthorn’s vampire sponsor leaves on business, the two-year vamp’s replacement is Becky, who gave Josh his first bite at their high school reunion. Becky requested the gig to ask Josh to join in her fight against her evil stepfather, Günter Van Helsing. The bloodsucker may have killed Becky’s father, and he also seems to have hypnotized her mother into marriage—practicing the same mind control he’s plotting to use against the world. Are the fledgling vamps a match against a vampire more than a century old? A number of vampire novels have a tendency to list guidelines for the undead, particularly when one is the narrator, but Grayson’s story thankfully avoids this. He allows the specifics of vampire life to unfold gradually (Josh quells the garlic myth with a quick joke about using it as a spice), without interrupting the main plot of stopping Van Helsing and rescuing Becky’s mom. The majority of vampire attributes cover familiar terrain: Senses are heightened, stakes kill and sunlight is tolerable with enough sunscreen. Grayson adds a few atypical touches—vamps reflect in mirrors and werewolf-killing silver bullets prove lethal to vampires. Josh and Becky’s romance isn’t fully fleshed out, relegated mostly to Josh’s jealousy over the presumed closeness between Becky and his human pal Steve. But Josh and Becky’s scenes together are pure regalement, especially when they spend the book’s second act practicing hypnosis and psychokinesis to combat Van Helsing’s powers, leading to their donning aluminum-foil hats to block the old vamp’s mind reading and caps to cover the foil so they aren’t seen as conspiracy nuts. The final act involves a somewhat typical attempt to infiltrate the villain’s HQ, but Grayson retains a good amount of humor throughout and incorporates subtle wordplay: “Vampires are suckers for the gothic look.”
Brings little that’s new to the world of literary vampires, but its unconventionality should leave readers with fanged smiles.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1480179066
Page Count: 376
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A gently assured, low-key pastoral of lost souls who find, in banal evil and thwarted altruism, the inspiration for human...
Delightful debut novel about American innocents abroad (“a thief and two Peace Corps volunteers”) and the Guatemalans whose lives they inevitably change.
Ed and Rachel joined the Peace Corps to do good, but now they can’t quite make contact with the people they’re supposed to help. They’ve become lovers, know each other so well they almost don’t have to talk, and have great sex; things, in short, have become so easy between them that neither is quite sure that the relationship will last. Carlton, meanwhile, is a gloomy professional thief who left New York because he was just too good at robbing people and wasn’t sure what he thought about his bisexuality. Able to support himself in luxury anywhere in the world, he stopped wandering when he found a beautiful lakeside villa in the small Guatemalan town of Panajachel, where he now tries—unsuccessfully—to stop stealing. When Rosario, the beautiful native Indian woman who cleans his villa, discovers the source of his wealth, Carlton makes her his partner in crime. Living in the same town is Ramiro, a native Indian farmer who quit his job as detective because he disliked working for the perversely brutal Hispanic police who he felt were exploiting other Indians (now, he’s learning English from Ed). When Carlton cleans out the sleeping Ed and Rachel, Ramiro dusts off his detective skills but wonders whether he suspects Rosario because of anti-Indian prejudices he acquired from his former cops, or whether she’s truly involved with the thief. As his characters cross paths, former Peace Corpsman Brazaitis, whose The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala (not reviewed) won the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Prize, wisely lets them meander through their loneliness and frustrations while feelings of alienation and uncertainty gradually change into mutual respect, gender-bending love, and selfless sacrifice.
A gently assured, low-key pastoral of lost souls who find, in banal evil and thwarted altruism, the inspiration for human kindness.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-9657639-8-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Lively and well-written, but not persuasive: Annie’s too obviously bad to be credible as a truly wicked woman.
A debut about fathers and children that should be affecting but, instead, is a breezy tale of a good guy outwitting a nasty, scheming woman who wants to keep everything for herself, including his son.
While he takes a DNA test and waits for the results that will prove whether he’s the father of four-year old Todd, narrator Gil Wexler recalls how he met, married, and then divorced Annie White. Gil, a photographer, was a 30-ish widower with three children—Allegra, Jack, and Wolfie—when a friend introduced him to Annie. Annie was recently separated, but after her divorce, as the new relationship intensified, soon moved into the house. At first the children liked her; then they began to resent her bossiness. When she became pregnant, though, Gil went ahead and married her anyway. Annie miscarried on their wedding day; then, determined to have a baby, was soon pregnant with Todd. After Todd’s birth, Annie, once seemingly sweet and giving, became moody, manipulative, and grasping. She insisted that Gil buy her a condo, where she and Todd could live apart from him and the other children. But when Annie claimed he demeaned her sexually and was suffocating her, Gil, by now tired of her demands and moods, decided he had no option but to divorce her. Which he does at some financial cost, but now, as Annie tries to prevent Gil seeing Todd, a sweet-natured boy whom he loves very much, Gil decides to fight back. And with the assistance of an unlikely lawyer, the grossly overweight Mormon F. Applebee, and with some extremely damning entries in an old journal kept by son Wolfie, Gil is ready to challenge Annie for the sake of Todd.
Lively and well-written, but not persuasive: Annie’s too obviously bad to be credible as a truly wicked woman.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-57962-067-1
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
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