MINION

Blade meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this first of a trilogy about a no-nonsense guerrilla leader of a rock-’n’-roll vampire-killer band. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to make Rolling Stone.

Like, really, does this all spring from Sun-tzu’s The Art of War, as the pseudonymous Banks suggests? Or does Damali Richards’s destiny spring from an event 20 years before, in New Orleans, when her father, Reverend Armand Richards, was turned by master vampire Fallon Nuit and her mother Sarah went to the swamp witch and fatally tried to follow the witch’s steps for exorcising Fallon Nuit, a member of the Vampire High Council and an elder dweller of the dark realm? While all that took place, the Richards’s infant Damali was baby-sat by Marlene Stone—while now, in the present, Marlene is the graying, visionary, real cool seer-guardian of Damali’s Warriors of Light Productions guardian-slayer band of devampers, with Sistah Marlene on electric violin, Mexican Indian Jose, a.k.a. Wizard, on drums and crossbow, Jake Rider on electric guitar, J.L. on crossbow, wooden stake and computer, Big Mike Roberts as audio-sensor, and Shabazz as Aikido-instructor/choreographer/bassist. That’s a bassist who triples in martial arts and dance? Whatever. You know the drill: Rhino bullets fresh-packed with hallowed earth, holy water grenades with the blast of C-4. Just don’t get nicked and turned when vibes sense in the audience multiple cold bodies that need icing. Nobody’s expendable, and four band members have already been nicked or exhumaned. But chill, man, Damali’s kick-ass elements can bring down a small army of vampires. So let’s do this. Except that Damali’s team now finds itself fighting a newer entity that eats out necks, hearts—call it the Amanthra thing from Hell. Later, Fallon Nuit abducts Damali’s sometime lover Carlos Rivera, a Hollywood club owner, and tempts him with the earthly glories earned by Blood Music, Inc. Bad, bad Carlos.

A pulsating blood-booster for raw adolescents—nobody over 20 should buy this.