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Blood Riders (2012)

by Michael P. Spradlin(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0062023098 (ISBN13: 9780062023094)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Harper Voyager

review 1: I saw this book and knew I just had to pick it up. In terms of potential measured this book is off of the charts. The US Civil War has just ended. It's the American west - the Wild West. There are the noble Utes and other tribes fighting a hopeless war against the unstoppable tide of European settlers. There are corrupt politicians and other crooks. There are dusty towns, saloons, whores, and trains. And then there are vampires. For the most part, the book works. The hero, Jonas Hollister, survives an attack by a renegade Vampire and, of course, everyone thinks he is crazy. He's sent to prison and the authorities would just as soon as forget about him. And then a Senator's son survives another attack. The right people start to believe him. He is sprung from Leavenworth by ... moreAlan Pinkerton on condition that he get to the bottom of the mystery. Along the way he picks up an unusual cast of characters to help him out. These include my favorite character, Chee, the half-African/half-Creek/half-Asian/half-something-or-other sergeant. Chee is a great, great addition. He inherits the wisdom of his upbringing - Voodoo wisdom from his Haitian-slave grandmother, and Asian martial (and mystery) arts from his father. Military training has only enhanced his skills. Chee brings the best out of Hollister and the author. He makes otherwise dull scenes funny. He is - somehow - Ed McMahon to Hollister's Johnny Carson. This doesn't even get to the next most awesome sidekick, Chee's dog, Dog. Dog is, well, a strange hybrid breed of canine - part wolf and part something else - that possesses an uncanny knack for understanding humans. Without Dog something would have been missing. Then there is Shaniah. She is the obligatory drop-dead gorgeous woman (who turns out to be undead) who first tries to kill Hollister and then allies with him. I felt this relationship was a little forced, but it was still fun. Finally, we have Slater a very bad man who was more than a cardboard prop set up to be torn down. He felt like a real person. I want more "real" villains. Well done.Clearly I liked the book and the characters, so why only four stars? Well, it comes down to the logic of the author's world. I like the worlds that I read about to make a certain sort of logical sense. If, for example, there is magic, I want that magic to 'fit' within the world. The author was mostly successful here. Vampires fit within the world and were revealed to us in a way that made sense. The underlying conflict between Malichi and Shaniah that drives the story as a whole also made sense. Where I thought the story struggled was in terms of the more mundane technology: firearms, steam engines and such. It is sometime between 1875 and 1880. Up until the book's beginning the world's technological innovation has perfectly matched our own world. Now, quite suddenly and with no logical explanation what-so-ever we are introduced to super-fast steam engines that never need to refuel with water, super enhanced Gatling guns, flame throwers, some sort of canister grenade launcher thing, and more. Monkey Pete even rigs up a mini-tank of sorts. I found my willingness to believe stretched dangerously thin. (For a point of comparison take a look at the way Larry Correia explains super-technology in the Grimnoir Chronicles).It is possible that all of this will be explained in good time - which would be fantastic. One of the things that I liked about Blood Riders was the way the author unrolled the world. It was done bit by bit and in a matter of fact way rather than by laboriously explaining it to me. This was done best with Chee who you learn more about as the story goes on.Two other minor gripes. First, the author tended to jump around quite a bit in terms of perspective. The story was mostly focused on Hollister, but the author was not afraid to take us behind someone else's eyes. I guess this was good for passing along the story but it also took me a bit to sink into each character and get to know them. Next, the book's ending was, I felt, just a tad cheesy. It felt like a bad "B" horror movie ending where the door is left open for a sequel. The book was too good for such a turn. (Those of you who have read the book know exactly what I am talking about.)Regardless, the book was loads of fun. It easily could have been five stars.
review 2: This read more like a movie script (and it would be an awesome movie) than a novel. So it was an absolute joy to read and I was totally absorbed while I was reading it. Afterwards though, you start asking yourself boy wasn't that convenient, that his sidekick is multi-racial and knows all of the magical lore from all of his ancestors. There was a whole lot of convenient plot points like that, but for me it wasn't a problem but I could see it driving others batty. It also looks like this will be a series, not sure if it can hold up over multiple novels, but I will definitely give the next one a shot. less

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