For this month's Ladies of Horror Fiction read-a-long, we headed over to Mexico, for some heady, dark vampire vibes. I managed to mess up the read-a-long yet again, trying to correct for reading You too early, I tried to time it a bit better...and ended up reading this month's book at a time where I was so busy I didn't manage to engage in any of the discussion anyway. I'm working on it. Regardless of the discussion (or lack thereof), this feels like a bit of a full circle for me, since another one of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's books, the incredible Mexican Gothic, was my very first post on this blog.
In Domingo's Mexico, Mexico City is an independent city state, and the only part of the country free from vampires. 17 year old Domingo lives a quiet, lonely life as a garbage collector, focused on just trying to survive on the streets. Until, that is, the day he meets Atl, an indigenous vampire of the Tlahuihpochtli, who can trace their ancestry all the way back to the Aztecs. Atl is smart, beautiful and incredibly dangerous, but Domingo is smitten. Atl is on the run - her family has been murdered by rival drug gang the Godoys in the North, and she needs to get out of Mexico, fast, before they catch up with her. At first Atl just needs Domingo for his blood, but the more he offers his help, the more she starts to develop a soft spot for the innocent street kid. However, the Godoys are closing in, as are the police and human gangs, who don't appreciate vampires on their turf. The bodies are piling up, and time is running out.
First things first, I love the premise of this. Absolutely love it. In this alternate world, there are ten different subspecies of vampires, with different traits, depending on the different geographical locations they hail from, and based on folklore from those places. The three main species we come into contact with in the book are the Tlahuihpochtli, Atl's subspecies, who were revered as gods back in the days of the Aztecs, can only drink the blood of the young, and turn into birds. The Godoys are Necros, who fit into the classic European image of vampires, and just like their European human counterparts, are definite colonisers . The third type are the Revenants, solitary creatures feared by other vampires for their ability to feed by sucking the life force out of anything - human or vampire. While the rest of the types are mentioned, and given a section in the bestiary at the back, we don't really get to meet any of them, which is a real shame. I was particularly excited about the glow-in-the-dark Obayifo from Western Africa, but alas. Regardless, it's a fresh and exciting take on one of the oldest subgenres of horror fiction, and it works. I'd really like to see another book set in the same world, exploring different characters and different vampire subspecies.
I loved the last Moreno Garcia book I read - Mexican Gothic - and while the both the genre of Certain Dark Things (a dark noire compared to a gothic horror) and the era (an alternate now compared to the 1950s) are completely different, the image that she paints of Mexico is still incredibly rich and vivid. Moreno Garcia has a real talent for immersing you in her worlds. There's less creeping horror here and more straight up action and brutal gore, which excellently done. There's also a clear colonialism theme - the Necros, unwelcome in Europe have expanded into the Americas, and taken over the territory of the indigenous Tlahuihpochtli, hunting them almost to extinction. It's not just the vampires that have threatened the existence of the Tlahuihpochtli, when the human colonisers arrived, they brought disease that tainted blood and made it impossible to feed. I love that Moreno-Garcia ground her horror in such real themes. I did read an interview where she says that the colonialism wasn't intentional, it just sort of happened...but I'm glad I did because it definitely works.
Although I really enjoyed this book, if anything, I really wish it was longer. At just over 200 pages, it doesn't really feel like everything was as explored as much it could have been. I really wanted more from the POV with the Detective, Aguirre, for instance, there was so much that I felt could have been done with her as an unwilling vampire hunter, but the direction her story takes is something of a disappointment, I felt. I would have also liked more reasoning and rationale behind the vampire drug wars, as they seemed a little - arbitrary? Glossed over? In fact, the whole ending felt a bit rushed, and a bit of a betrayal of the careful character development that had been done up to that point.
The rest of the book was solid enough that this isn't too much of an issue though, so I'd still recommend it, and I'm putting more Silvia Moreno Garcia on my tbr pile for sure, I'm excited to explore more of her worlds.
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