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
Farewell, bloodsuckers! Hail, Azriel the Ghost! So thinks the reader plunging into Rice's latest supernatural epic, in which Azriel, the Wandering Babylonian Ghost who cannot die, replaces Rice's familiar casts of vampires and witches. The first half of the novel shows Rice (Memnoch the Devil, 1995, etc.) at her descriptive best, her purple pen limning Babylon's hanging gardens, golden passageways, and jeweled clothing. Young Azriel, a Jew who works for the Babylonian priests and whose best friend is the god Marduk, is murdered by a magician who coats Azriel's bones with heavy gold: Throughout the ages any magician who owns the bones can call forth Azriel, a rebel ghost and impudent genie. Rice imaginatively describes in depth the swimming spirit world of competing gods and ghosts who, unseen, walk the streets of Babylon, and the reader surrenders happily to their presence amid the ancient splendor. Azriel hops and skips through the centuries and through a number of masters until suddenly, seemingly unsummoned, appearing before a Fifth Avenue clothing store in time to see wealthy young Esther Belkin murdered, Azriel quickly kills the three assassins who've driven ice picks into her. But why is he here in this reelingly strange modern Babylon of skyscrapers and hurtling taxis? It's soon clear that Esther's death is the sacrifice of his own daughter to God by multibillionaire televangelist Gregory Belkin, high priest of the Temple of the Minds. Gregory has a worldwide following and is about to wipe out much of the earth's population so that he can "rise from the dead" and become the globe's Messiah. Can Azriel stop him? The novel is dedicated to GOD, who may find Rice's modern-day scenes plotted waveringly as she paddles about. Lesser readers may wish she'd stayed in Babylon, where their suspension of disbelief and her imaginative energies are at their strongest.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 1613771738
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
Kuper’s black-heavy style, best used in his narrative work, here deadens jokes that need air and light: he’s a great talent...
A regular contributor to magazines as diverse as Time and Mad, Kuper collects a second batch of his “Eye of the Beholder” cartoons, all in the same basic pattern: “four panels of clues to guess which point of view your eyes are following.”
The answer is on the next page in a single, larger frame. Fortunately, Kuper breaks the form with regularity. Not that he changes his panel pattern, but his mostly wordless, woodcut style cartoons don’t strictly follow his dictum: some aren’t literal points of view, some are imagined visual histories, and some are the desires of his hapless figures. Many of Kuper’s visual puzzles are politically pointed, with the pay-off frame packing the punch of an editorial: four views of white people tanning are seen by a black janitor; various guns on a rack are ogled by a young boy; floating garbage is viewed by a mermaid; a defoliated forest is watched by Tarzan.The best comics are the most surprising ones: four different frames seen by, among others, a window washer, a crash-test dummy, a construction working using a jackhammer, and a new-born baby. Often the four views serve as a visual history, with the punch-line frame including the person visualizing the past: a hotel maid sees the various inhabitants of the room she’s cleaning; a piece of gum on someone’s shoe ends a sequence on the history of its manufacture. The wittiest pieces confound reality: a jar of pills views its consumer in various stages; a turkey flashes on its future as dinner; and the Grim Reaper surveys his victims. Kuper uses himself to great effect: circling sharks turn out to be the lawyers surrounding him at a table; trees being converted to wood products end up in his hand as pencils; and, funniest of all, scenes of an empty bookstore are his views at a book-signing.
Kuper’s black-heavy style, best used in his narrative work, here deadens jokes that need air and light: he’s a great talent who hasn’t yet found a subject suited to his style.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56163-259-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: NBM
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
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