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Summary
Summary
From a critically-acclaimed novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia comes Certain Dark Things , a pulse-pounding and action-packed contemporary fantasy that turns vampire fiction on its head.
Welcome to Mexico City... An Oasis In A Sea Of Vampires...
Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is busy eking out a living when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life.
Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, must feast on the young to survive and Domingo looks especially tasty. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous, Atl needs to escape to South America, far from the rival narco-vampire clan pursuing her. Domingo is smitten.
Her plan doesn't include developing any real attachment to Domingo. Hell, the only living creature she loves is her trusty Doberman. Little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his effervescent charm.
And then there's Ana, a cop who suddenly finds herself following a trail of corpses and winds up smack in the middle of vampire gang rivalries.
Vampires, humans, cops, and gangsters collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive?
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Moreno-Garcia's action-packed second standalone novel (after Signal to Noise) brings myths from multiple cultures into focus as different, coexisting types of vampires get tangled up in the drug wars of near-future Mexico, setting the stage for a bloody and engrossing story of rival families. Mexico City has done its best to ban vampires from entry, but 17-year-old Domingo, a trash picker, manages to find one: 23-year-old Atl. She pays Domingo to let her briefly feed on him; struck by her beauty, he works his way further into her life. Domingo and Atl grow closer while trying to protect each other from the vicious Godoy family, who killed Atl's family and are now after her. Few of the characters would be considered likable, but they're more interesting for their flaws. A bittersweet, satisfying ending confirms that Moreno-Garcia is an author to watch. Agent: Eddie Schneider, JABberwocky Literary. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Moreno-Garcia's latest, following Signal to Noise (2015), envisions a fascinating near-future Mexico City with vampire drug lords vying for territory. The story starts out simply enough: boy meets girl on a train she needs blood; he can use the cash. Domingo, a street-smart garbage picker, is fascinated by Alt, a young vampire from an ancient Aztec clan. Alt shouldn't be in the city, a vampire-free zone controlled by human drug cartels and corrupt police, constantly patrolled by crews checking for vampire incursions. She is the pampered child of vampire wealth with no knowledge of the human world, running from the Necros, a vicious vampire species that slaughtered her entire family. Alt needs help to escape the city, and Domingo may be the one person who can aid her, if she can control her bloodlust long enough to keep him alive. Vampires only know hunger and Alt is very hungry. This fast-paced horror tale presents a new, alternate world of vampire-human rivalry and will appeal to those who enjoy rooting for unlikely heroes.--Lockley, Lucy Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Two space colonies fall into confrontation amid a refugee crisis; in an alternate steampunk history, King Leopold's minions are driven from the Congo; and a vampire gang war rages in Mexico City. AMID A RENAISSANCE of genre short fiction, the most recent trend has been stand-alone print versions of novellas (officially classified by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as works between 17,500 and 40,000 words in length). The novella the four thousand, THE EIGHT HUNDRED (Subterranean Press, $40) , by the Australian author Greg Egan, was originally published in the December 2015 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, to substantial acclaim and multiple award nominations. Its "deluxe hardcover" reprint will be available as a limited edition of 1,000 copies. At an unspecified point in the distant future, two colonies on asteroids have established a stable, mutually beneficial trading partnership. Lately, however, the Vesta colony has been sending forth a wholly different sort of export: refugees fleeing oppression, who attach themselves to cargo via a laborious and dangerous process. If they survive, they can reach the relative safety of the Ceres colony. The story follows Anna, the new port director of Ceres, who hopes to save lives by better understanding the refugees' desperation, and Camille, a refugee whose journey to Ceres presages a harrowing confrontation between the two colonies. Or rather, it's a confrontation that should be harrowing. Unfortunately Egan's interest is clearly in the ideas of the story - intellectual property; the difficulties of surviving hostile environments; whether benign terrorism is possible or a self-contradiction. A focus on the characters, which would give this story the poignancy that its subject matter demands, is lacking. The characters all speak with similar voices, which they use to spout philosophy at one another in overlong dialogue segments. More damning is the way Egan constructs the conflict on Vesta, which is so simplistic as to suggest that Egan doesn't fully understand how oppression works - or that he is trying to make an inappropriate point. This strips most meaningful real-world resonance from the story. Hard science fiction fans intrigued by the logistics of inter-asteroid trade will enjoy this tale. Its broader appeal is unlikely. in 2012, Ursula K. le GUIN personally edited a two-part collection of her short stories, published then by Small Beer Press, This collection has now been reprinted by Saga Press in a single massive hardcover called the unreal and the real (Saga, $29.99). In tandem with the story collection, and new this year, Le Guin has also gathered all of her published novellas in a volume called the found AND THE LOST (Saga, $29.99). While all 39 of the stories and all 13 of the novellas have been published previously, many haven't appeared in print in decades - which alone makes this collection worth the price. There's little overlap between the two volumes; several of the novellas and short stories are part of the Hainish Cycle, but each stands alone thematically and plotwise. The only redundancy is one novella that appears in both books: the trippy Coyote tale "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight." Yet the two volumes are unified by Le Guin's consistent exploration of women's voices and the numinous, as well as her contempt for the artificial division between genre and realist literature. Perhaps to emphasize the latter, Le Guin divides the short story collection into halves: stories set in modern America and other realistic milieus, and stories on other planets or in fantasy realms. The unreal stories are no less powerful than the real, as anyone who has ever read the beautifully brutal "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" already knows. The novella collection is not so meaningfully organized, but this isn't necessary; the stories are more in conversation with the genre (and literature in general) than with one another. Fans of Le Guin should get both books. People who have read one story of hers on a college syllabus but nothing else should get both books. Critics should get both books as well as her recent essay collection words are my matter (Small Beer, $24). Only people who might have difficulty with the weighty hardcover volumes or their equally weighty price should reconsider. Those people should get the e-books. it takes powerful storytelling indeed to mitigate one of the most horrific atrocities in human history. The veteran short fiction and essay writer Nisi Shawl manages to succeed, paradoxically, through emphasis. In several stark scenes, the characters of everfair (Tor/Tom Doherty, $26.99) attend to the bodies of children murdered by the dozen, women who have been decapitated, people whose hands have been cut off. These victims and millions more were the grisly harvest of the Belgian King Leopold Il's colonialist regime in the region then known as the Congo Free State - now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shawl's refusal to gloss over history's ugliness, and the palpable depth of research that bolsters her depictions, creates a sort of moral and aesthetic void. The reader is left willing, even eager, to accept the escape that Shawl offers: an imaginative alternate history, in which a coalition of Western socialists, Asian inventors and indigenous people fighting the Belgians form a new nation called Everfair. Bolstered by steampunk inventions both familiar (dirigibles) and beautifully strange (clockwork prosthetic hands that can be weaponized), the citizens of Everfair wage a successful war to drive out Leopold's minions. Then things get hard. In Everfair all are equal, or so its Western founders insist - but maintaining an uneasy coalition of such disparate cultures and personalities, especially amid the psychosocial baggage of global imperialism and racism, proves a greater challenge than merely defeating an army. It's soaring, high-minded stuff, and Shawl does a marvelous job of demonstrating the capabilities of the steampunk subgenre, which too often sacrifices the richness of actual, global history in favor of Victorian fetishization and racial exclusion. Yet the story suffers from too many jumps in time, overly quick transitions of scene and mood, and the inclusion of too many characters - so many that a lengthy list of notables at the beginning seems less a Victorian flourish and more a necessity. It has the feel of a travelogue, permitting the reader only passing glimpses of Everfair rather than the immersion that the story demands. Even so, it is a travelogue of a long, dangerous and fascinating journey through what might have been, and as such it will delight most readers. in an alternate modern day, Mexico City has maintained its status as a vampire-free city state for many years - officially, at least. The lonely, romantic garbage collector Domingo knows the truth: City authorities are more interested in maintaining the appearance of security than its reality, leaving all sorts of evils to flourish unchecked in the city's shadows. Like, for instance, a vampire gang war. Darkly ironic worldbuilding is the real treat of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's CERTAIN DARK THINGS (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's, $25.99), which posits that vampires are a species that coexists with humans, most recently amid the human underworld. The core of the tale is a parallel of colonialism, in which indigenous vampires of Mexico - once partnered with the Aztecs - are threatened by amoral, disease-carrying European vampires encroaching on their drug trade and feeding territory. Domingo serves as the reader's proxy as he meets Atl, a young indigenous vampire on the run from these "Necros," and through her he discovers the complex, myth-flavored vampire world. Here, hopping Chinese vampires have beaten out Canadian were-bear vampires to rule Vancouver's night; glowin-the-dark African-descended vampires rule Brazil; and European vampires have survived pogroms and other oppressive campaigns reminiscent of those enacted against the Jewish and Romani peoples. Domingo and Atl's story - despite being forged amid a gang war - frankly feels prosaic in comparison with this vibrant world. MorenoGarcia's terse prose compounds the problem; it beautifully illustrates Domingo's deceptive simplicity, but otherwise feels distractingly choppy. There's more than enough richness elsewhere in the story, however, so one hopes that return visits to this urban fantasy world are in the offing. ? N. K. JEMISIN won a 2016 Hugo Award for her novel "The Fifth Season." Her latest book is its sequel, "The Obelisk Gate."
Library Journal Review
Atl is a vampire on the run and hiding out in one of the few places that have successfully banned the undead: Mexico City. She meets a young, homeless trash-picker named Domingo who offers to help. Atl has been followed to the city by Nick, the spoiled and brutal scion of the rival vampire gang that wishes her dead. One of the bodies Nick leaves in his wake as he hunts Atl catches the attention of cop Ana, who has a history with vampires. With no support from her misogynistic colleagues, she reluctantly partners with local human criminal gangs to find the killers. Atl's native heritage has a history entwined with Mexico's Aztec past, but there are other species absorbingly described. Domingo is a hapless and naive helper besotted with Atl, while Atl herself is a vicious yet still appealing heroine to root for as cops, crooks, and vampires hunt her across the steamy streets of the capital. -VERDICT The Mexican setting is a huge part of the allure of this new novel from -Moreno-Garcia (Signal to Noise), as are the fascinating varieties of vampires she sets forth.-MM © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
