A werewolf, a vampire and
a ghost ruin a Goth girl’s plan to open a portal for the old gods to usher in a
new world of darkness.
This is a very, very funny horror story that uses all the tropes of
urban fantasy and spins them in a redneck kind of way. The vibe is one part
ZOMBIELAND and one part FROM DUSK TIL DAWN with a big dash of DUCK DYNASTY/HERE
COMES HONEY BOO BOO thrown in. In other words, although the characters include
vampires and werewolves and ghosts and zombies (and zombie cows), the backdrop
is pure regional.
It’s a really loopy and
off the wall and extremely entertaining as a book. Martinez really does urban
fantasy well and he and Christopher Moore seem to have this branch of the genre
all to themselves.
The characters are all
fully realized and recognizable human beings, even when they’re undead or
ghosts or weres or just hapless minions of the manipulative Tammy/Lilith.
The relationship between
Earl(the vampire) and Duke (the wereworlf) is believable and often hilarious. (Earl likes
to get in a few extra minutes of sleep in the evening and Duke enjoys rousting
him out of his steamer trunk “bed.” Martinez is terrific at filling in the
matter-of-fact practicalities of being a vampire in a small town (“You’d better
watch what you eat,” Duke cautions Earl and hands him some “hamburger juice.”)
This is a world where vampires and werewolves and zombies exist and cause all
kinds of problems for the humans involved. It’s a refreshing take on urban
fantasy and there’s a real sense of deep mythology to the story as well.
The dialogue works well.
It’s country-fried but never gets too outrageous, and fits the characters.
Tammy and Chad, the mismatched teenage would-be necromancers, come across as
the kind of troublemakers everyone remembers from high school—the mean girl
beauty and her jock consort.
There are a few places
where Martinez gets a little too whimsical, like naming his lawman Sheriff
Marshall Kopp, a joke that works better on paper than it will verbally. Most of
the time though, he’s wickedly on target. Fans of horror will get all of his
little inside jokes and digs, and that’s part of the pleasure as well.
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