A violent, sardonic superhero tale of transformative grief.
A misanthropic widower turns into a super-vampire in Renken’s horror/fantasy novel.
As the story opens, an unnamed, middle-aged narrator has just buried his wife who died after a long and painful bout with cancer. He’s sad and angry in his grief, and after giving the cold shoulder to other mourners at the funeral, he drunkenly stumbles to the home of his best (and only) friend, a wealthy shut-in named Bernie, who’s just purchased a very expensive vial of blood. The narrator, annoyed by his friend’s gullibility, takes the vial and impulsively drinks it down in one gulp. It’s only afterward that he learns from Bernie what a mistake he’s made: He’s just ingested vampire blood. The narrator laughs at this revelation until he transforms into a vampire himself: “There were muscles everywhere. And muscles making love to those muscles. Most surprising of all, there was a washboard stomach. What I think is called an eight-pack….Actually, that was only the second most surprising thing. The most surprising thing was…that there was no penis.” The man soon learns he’s become part of an ancient fraternity of immortal creatures pledged to rid the world of child killers. But is the troubled man up to the task? Despite the title, the book is not a graphic novel but a prose one, albeit one festooned with red-and-black ink drawings and occasional comic-book-style typefaces. The voice is self-aware and offers readers a hefty dose of Deadpool-style irreverence, and it will appeal to fans of that arch storytelling tone. At one point, for instance, the narrator takes a moment away from the opening scene—a rainy graveside service—to prepare readers for how often he’ll be saying the F-word over the course of his tale: “I’m gonna use that word a lot. Like about 432 times a lot. So you’ve been warned. But back to the scene already in progress.” The humor is sophomoric and profane, as well; a typical joke is that Bernie loves talking about performing fellatio. Its ideal audience will likely be those who love dark comic-horror tales.
A violent, sardonic superhero tale of transformative grief.Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2022
ISBN: 9781940300658
Page Count: 162
Publisher: St. Petersburg Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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