May 102013
Vampires
The cult classic is back?for fans who like their vampire hunters hard-boiled.
You don?t just kill vampires for the money?you do it for the satisfaction. You do it because somebody has to. You do it no matter what it does to you. And you drink?a lot. Some jobs just suck. This one bites.
But nobody does it better than Jack Crow, the leader of VAMPIRE$ Inc. His crack team of hunters takes down the blood suckers with a lethal combination of cojones and crossbows.
After members
List Price: $ 15.00
Price: $ 4.61
Next to the original “Dracula”, the best one I’ve ever read,
I read a lot of horror books, many of which deal with vampires. About one in ten is good (an unfortunate low number), and about one in a hundred is great. This one is. The other two (concerning vampires) that springs to mind are Carrion Comfort (a novel approach by Dan Simmons) and the original Dracula (and yes, Bram Stoker’s film sucks). Anne Rice, well, that’s for the kiddies and supermarket crowd.
Steakley manages to make the vampire a completely believable “thing” without any mumbo-jumbo “flying around in the night” stuff. That makes it a scary book (which is why we read horrror in the first place, yes?). The pace is just right, the cast is great and the story’s premise is stupendously brilliant. It is actually hard to pinpoint any specific reason, but this is a GREAT book. I’ve even reread it several times (I’ve had it for close to ten years, and NOW I am writing a review, that should say something), and it is a great read even the second (or third) time around.
Steakley is one of the authors I run through Amazon’s search engine every now and then, hope shining in my eyes. Sadly, only the two same hits ever come up (the other is “Armor”, an awesome 5-star sci-fi story I also fully recommend).
Was this review helpful to you?
|Please don’t blame the book for the movie…,
I mean that. “John Carpenter’s Vampires” was a decent movie, if a bit trite (a black cross? reverse exorcism? please…), but this book is anything but trite. It is vulgar, edgy, dark, and very very good. Forget the limp-wristed characters Anne Rice writes about. Steakley’s vampires are a monsterous lot, full of violence and horror. Brian Lumley’s books are a much closer comparison, and that is high praise in deed (for me, anyway). It doesn’t hurt that I grew up not ten miles from Cleburne, Texas, and it was a kick in the pants when I saw the city represented in the book (it’s a small, dusty, Texas town without much of note), not to mention the fact that John is from there. On a side note, his dad’s dealership has moved to Fort Worth, I believe.
Anyway, before I digress further, go buy this book! It was action aplenty, characters that just grab you by the lapels and shake you, and a story that never tires no matter how many times I read it. This is a first class American vampire novel. Forget about Rice. THIS is was a vampire book *should* be.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Don’t let the cheezy dialogue fool you…,
I am an avid fan of the vampire genre. I read this book five years ago. At first, I thought it was one of those foolish parodies, like Doon, because of the cheezy dialogue and antics of the character Cherry Cat. However, I decided to read on and give it the benefit of the doubt. Well, neither the dialogue nor the antics got any better, but I have to admit that I liked the book regardless. Another one of your reviews stated that the reader laughed, cried, and clapped their way throughout the story. I believe that this is what makes this book so good. Some may say this is an excellent book whilst others may say that it is a waste of trees. However, it succeeds in taking the reader through a myriad of emotions and that, if nothing else, earns it a “moving read” review from me. My advice to anyone interested in reading this book, don’t let the cheezy dialogue fool you. Underneath that is a pretty good story.
Was this review helpful to you?
|