Knuckle Supper

REVIEW
Knuckle Supper (hardcover)
Author: Drew Stepek
Publisher: Alphar/$25.72
Date of Publication: 2010
Reviewed by James J. Gormley (member, National Book Critics Circle)

The other day I was telling Drew Stepek, fellow HWA member and the author of a new vampire book, Knuckle Supper, that despite the fact that his vampire-canon-busting novel is one of the most disgusting, unrelentingly violent and horrifying horror works I have ever read, the over-the-top violence and gore are not gratuititous.

Without giving away the story (which I won't), the leader of a group of heroin-addicted vampires, RJ, has the normal abnormalcy of his own chaotic, blood-and-drug-hazed existence challenged when he reluctantly takes in a 12-year-old runaway girl, Bait Jenkins.

When a drug deal goes south and RJ's gang, The Knucklers, winds up with an unexpected windfall, it isn't long before rival gangs (from Rastas to transvestite prostitutes to argyle-wearing preppies) start taking revenge and jockeying for the pole position in the vampire-run L.A. drug trade.

And to make matters worse, seemingly pulling the strings behind the L.A. vamps is a group of breakaway religious fanatics called The Cloth and a wannabe nun and psychopath nicknamed The Habit, who not only seem to know everything about where R.J. and his junkie gangster allies and rivals actually come from but who want to pull the plug on their twisted experiment.

In the book, R.J. says: "I don't know why we're alive or what purpose we have besides delivering misery and death, I can tell you one thing though; there is something human in us all."

And true enough to R.J.'s revelation, while various types of exploitation form the lives or the backgrounds of almost all of the players in this bloodfest, Stepek is masterful in enabling us to actually feel sorrow and empathy for a few of the characters (not only R.J. and Bait) and to see the human in the monsters and the monster in the humans.

With gangs reminiscent of the crews in Walter Hill's 1979 film, The Warriors, there are intentional and unintentional homages to a range of movies and horrific classics from A Clockwork Orange to Trainspotting.

Knuckle Supper is a game changer, to be sure, and this has got to be one of the most original vampire works ever created; with it, Stepek turns the entire vampire mythos on its head and fully slays the almost-dead,angst-ridden, sparkly vampire once and for all.

Bravo, Drew, bravissimo!

The Strain

REVIEW
The Strain (hardcover)
Authors: Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
Publisher: William Morrow/Harper Collins/$10.08
Date of Publication: 2009
Reviewed by James J. Gormley (member, National Book Critics Circle)

In this first installment in Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's The Strain Trilogy, The Strain introduces us to a modern-day New York in which a number of convincing characters emerge to drive the action of this nail-biting bloodfest, including:

• Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (head of a rapid-response CDC team that investigates biological threats, such as plague and viruses);
• Abraham Setrakian (a Holocaust survivor who has been awaiting the coming vampiric plague for decades, and is ready for it);
• Vasily Fet, a no-nonsense pest-control specialist; and
• Dr. Nora Martinez, Eph's comrade-at-arms on the CDC team.

The story really begins when a plane lands at JFK on September 24th, 2010, and then goes completely silent, as in dead, which is when Eph and Nora are mobilized.

With only a handful of survivors and only precious little time in which to neutralize a plague of undead dimensions, Eph, Setrakian, Fet and Nora join forces, come what may, to combat a threat that endangers not only New York City ...  but the entire world.

The Strain is a nail-biter, to be sure, one which is enriched by deft touches that show a real familiarity with and love of New York City, such as the mention of Liebman's Deli, greatly appreciated by this blog's author, who lives in Riverdale and who loves Liebman's.

More importantly, Academy Award-winning director, del Toro, and award-winning author, Hogan, mange to breathe fresh life into the vampire mythos, an admirable feat indeed, and in the process create a new legend and begin a new story, the next installments of which this writer awaits with bated breath.

The 2009 Bram Stoker Award Finalists

By James J. Gormley

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) celebrates the 2009 Bram Stoker Award finalists by honoring superior achievement in the following categories: Novel; First Novel; Long Fiction; Short Fiction; Anthology; Collection; Nonfiction; Poetry Collection; Lifetime Achievement; Specialty Press and others. Please visit: http://www.lisamorton.com/hwa/sto2010/stokers10.htm

Some Girls Bite

REVIEW
Some Girls Bite (softcover)
Author: Chloe Neill
Publisher: New American Library/$26.99
Date of Publication: 2009
Reviewed by James J. Gormley (member, National Book Critics Circle)

Kind of over the puling teenage angst of books titularly related to dusk, moons and dawn? Well then, author Chloe Neill’s Some Girls Bite may be just the book for you. Told in first-person by a character who’s a sharp, sassy and pretty third-year Chicago grad student, Merit, Some Girls Bite introduces us to a world that has, just eight months prior, found out---thanks to a vamp-called press conference---that bloodsuckers really exist.

With some of the freshest writing in vampire fiction today, after Merit is attacked by rogue vampires and then made a vampire by the aristocratic head of high-class Cadogan House, Ethan Sullivan, she writes: “The blood was gone---and I’d been manicured.”

Filled with deft touches that are clever and smart without being cutesie, Neill takes us through Merit’s training as the official protector (Sentinel) of Cadogan House, and shares with us the friendship of her blue-haired housemate with growing witchly powers, Mallory, a sorcerer named Catcher and a houseless vamp named Jeff, for whom Mallory falls head over ruby slippers.

Merit’s Cadogan House is part of a vampiric world of manor-like power centers that feel, to the reader, like a blending of the Talamasca motherhouse in Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles and the vampires’ castle-like manse in Underworld but sans the doilies or the decadence, respectively.

As Merit trains and awes the vampires of Cadogan with her fighting and weaponry skills, there is a growing war that is threatening to endanger the entire undead society that has just been voluntarily exposed.

One of the most satisfying aspects of this book, Neill’s inaugural entry in her Chicagoland Vampires series, is that it taps into the concerns and conflicts of younger (pre-30) people today without becoming shackled by cliché or stereotypes.

Merit really hates her father, but loves her grandfather. She cares about her nails, but can destroy almost anyone (masterly male vamps included) with her sword-wielding skills. The same goes for the secondary characters; Mallory, for example, may be a blue-haired clubgoer, but she’s also a savvy businesswoman.

So, all in all, this debut by Chloe Neill is a bold fresh piece of vampire lit, indeed, and we are truly fortunate that the sequel, Friday Night Bites, has just been released.

That Which Bites

REVIEW
That Which Bites (softcover)
Author: Celis T. Rono
Publisher: VBW Publishing/$14.35
Date of Publication: 2009
Reviewed by James J. Gormley (member, National Book Critics Circle)

Celis T. Rono's own website describes the book's plot succinctly:

The Gray Armageddon has destroyed most of humanity. Vampires have slinked out of hiding, penning the few human survivors as blood cattle. Young Julia Poe survives the horror. She has dodged the undead since she was eight years old in downtown Los Angeles and has the only untapped vein in the new realm. Now she celebrates her 22nd birthday as a cattle rustler, fighting vampire factions and plotting revenge. Kaleb Sainvire, the master vampire and architect responsible for 'milking cattle,' is first on Poe’s list. That is, if she isn’t taken by his vampiric allure.

In this debut novel with echoes of the ultimate apocalyptic vampire classic, I Am Legend, Rono's fresh vision of a dystopian nightmare with fangs is character driven. Its central protagonist is a 5' 3" dynamo who has had to grow up hiding in the ruins of Los Angeles.

With no frames of reference to guide her, Poe has spent thousands of hours in an underground bunker alone watching old-school porn movies, practicing martial arts and preparing various vampire-unfriendly weapons involving bullets, garlic oil and holy water. Rono's Poe is a colorful, well-drawn, likable and fully fleshed out female badass who has a soft side, too, and who repeats this mantra when she's really in a pickle: "I am Bruce Lee's daughter, Muhammed Ali's niece and Xena's clone. I fear no one!"

Allied for years with a gun-toting nun named Sister Ann and a 6' 7" giant of a man named Goss, Poe, her friends and some cattle rustling contacts, spend most of their daylight hours helping imprisoned humans escape from blood bondage and vampire suckage.

After a bloody attack on her friends, Poe is rescued, somewhat against her will, by Sainvire. Although drawn to him, she is also repelled because he is said to have masterminded the whole human blood farm business to begin with.

Rono sure delivers an armageddon with characters involved in a fast-moving, suspenseful frightfest that is uniquely believable, characters who are, themselves, real and fallable, whose secrets (dark, heroic or otherwise) are revealed in ways which allow friendships and relationships to form, shatter and sometimes coalesce again with newfound respect or understanding.

When a council of vampire ancients gets involved and an undead war is at hand, what will Poe do? Whom will she trust? How will it all end?

You will definitely want to get a hold of That Which Bites and find out.

REVIEW: I Am Legend

REVIEW
I Am Legend
(softcover)
Author: Richard Matheson
Publisher: Orb/$14.95 (317 pages)
Date of Publication: 1954/1995
Reviewed by James J. Gormley (member, National Book Critics Circle)

The introduction that many people have recently had to Richard Matheson and his classic vampire story, I am Legend, was in the form of the eponymous Warner Brothers' movie from 2007 starring Will Smith.

The version of the film that aired in theatres bore scant resemblance to the classic horror/sci-fi classic novel from 1954, although the original ending (now called the "alternate ending") would have connected more with the core of Matheson's story.

The Robert Neville character in I Am Legend is legendary because, one, he is the very last human who has not been infected by the vampire "germ" and, two, because he has been waging a battle against the vampires for years.

One major difference between the novel and the film is that in Matheson's book there are different kinds of vampires, including people who suffer from a type of vampiric infection that can be controlled. Or can it?

Ultimately, Matheson's Neville is both more simple and more complex than the movie's character, although in the novel (and in the movie's alternate ending) Neville's desperately brutal search to find a cure reveals both a glimpse of the monstrous in what we call human and of the humane in what we call monster.

REVIEW: The New Annotated Dracula

REVIEW
The New Annotated Dracula
(hardcover)
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger
Publisher: W.W. Norton/$26.37 (672 pages)
Date of Publication: 2008
Reviewed by James J. Gormley (member, National Book Critics Circle)

Certainly a book review blog devoted to vampire fiction must begin with Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Although the vampire legend, or mythos, can be traced back thousands of years to such dark deities as the befanged Indian goddess, Kali, the blood-drinking Egyptian power, Sekhmet and a legion of blood/soul/life-sucking succubi of various cultures, the tradition from which Stoker drew his inspiration was mainly from southeastern Europe, the 18th century on.

Although Stoker's Dracula was preceded by other vampiric tales --- such as John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), James Malcolm Rymer's Varney, the Vampyre (serialized between 1845-1847), Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's "Camilla" (1872), George du Maurier's Trilby (1894) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Sussex Vampire" (1896) --- it is Stoker's tale that truly established and defined the Dracula and vampire genres.

Klinger's definitive annotated edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula employs the "gentle fiction," or conceit, that Stoker's tale is based on real characters and true events. This device welcomes an exhaustively thorough historical and factual examination of the work that will delight Dracula fans and history buffs alike.

Dracula is a remarkable work from all any perspective. Even from a basic English literary perspective, Stoker's story must surely qualify as one of the first genuinely modern works of fiction.

While Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) is regarded as many as the first English novel, Dracula is extremely modern in its structure, since it is not a conventional narrative at all but is, instead, a collection of first-person, chronologically progressing, diary and journal entries enriched by newspaper clippings. Similar in some structural ways to another landmark English novel, Henry James' Turn of the Screw (serialized in 1898), Dracula offers the jarring, slightly disjointed documentary feel of such modern horror movies as Cloverfield and the Blair Witch Project.

Whether one wishes to believe that Dracula is a true story that has been doctored to protect the identity of certain characters and to make it appear that Dracula is destroyed, or one wishes to simply enjoy the novel for the disturbing gothic nightmare that it is, Klinger's annotated edition surrounds our entree (the story) with a whole banquet hall full of tasty appetizers, tempting side dishes and dark desserts of trivia, facts, observations and insights that provide a panoramic perspective, and context, for every scene and event in the tale.

Klinger is as comfortable drawing references to modern-day interpretations of things vampiric (such as the wildly popular Buffy, the Vampire Slayer) as he is taking us through the fascinating arcana behind Stoker's novel.

Just as Stoker's masterwork is the story against which virtually all vampire fiction is judged --- how faithful to, how different from, and so forth --- Klinger's edition is clearly the definitive text against which all other annotated Dracula editions should be compared.

WELCOME TO VAMPIRE BOOKS NAVIGATOR!

Greetings fellow authors, vampirophiles, vampire book bibliophiles, librarians, publishers, authors' representatives and publicists, book buyers and distributors, and all those whose interest, passion or business (maybe all three) includes vampire books!

Why would one even want help navigating the choppy (sometimes bloody) waters of books that fall in the sub-genre of vampire books?

One reason: because vampire books are legion and it helps to find reviews that sort the wheat from the chaff, or, er, the blood from the guts.

Since the books reviewed here are all worthwhile vampire books, choosing any (or all) of them, as time goes by, will make our wallets and vampire-loving hearts happy since we won't be misled into buying books that, ahem, suck!

Starting with two of the greatest vampire novels of all time --- Dracula and I Am Legend --- we will cover a wide range of vampire tales, from the classics to books that are just plain fun to read, including, not necessarily in this order:

• Stephen King's Salem's Lot;
• Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire;
  
• Whitley Strieber's The Hunger;
• Kim Newman's Anno Dracula;
• Laurell K. Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures;
• P.N. Elrod's I, Strahd;
• E.E. Knight's Way of the Wolf;
• Kim Harrison's Every Which Way But Dead;
• David Wellington's Vampire Zero;
• Chloe Neill's Some Girls Bite;
• Celis T. Rono's That Which Bites;

... and many more!

Who's James Gormley and why should we trust him?

Well, I am a published author, a former book editor, a member of the National Book Critics Circle and I was horror book reviewer for Publishers Weekly from 1993 through 1998. I have been a member of the Horror Writers Association and helped develop the writers' guidebook, Writing Horror, with Mort Castle for Writers Digest Books. I am also a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA).

So there you have it--we're off to a bloody good start!
Authors, publishers, authors' publicists and representatives: please put me on your lists of reviewers to whom advance or first-off copies of books and requests for comment are sent.
Please mail advance and/or review copies to:
James J. Gormley
Vampire Books Navigator
c/o PCE, Inc.
377 Park Avenue South
6th Floor
New York, NY 10016

Thanks!
James J. Gormley