Vampire$ by John Steakley

I really didn’t know what to expect of this novel when I first began reading it and now that I’ve finished…I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s the story of a group of present-day mercenary vampire hunters who will clean out a nest in return for dollars. They don’t really seem to do it for the pay though so much as the idea of “somebody has to do it”. The team is led by Jack Crow and we discover during the course of the novel that he has been doing this for three years which is longer than anybody else he’s heard of. But he also knows he won’t ever win the war; there will always be more nests and he and his team can’t live forever.

These vampires are tough creatures to kill. This is not Buffy’s universe where you can simply go out on patrol, stake a few vamps here and there and call it a good night. These are horrendous monsters and it takes all of their ingenuity and teamwork just to kill the “normal” ones. When it comes to the masters, it’s a whole ‘nother level. Practically like fighting a deity. 

Parts of the novel were excellent, especially some of the fight scenes. My eyes were glued to the page to see how it would turn out. It’s like reading a hard-boiled men’s adventure story…with vampires. But other parts, unfortunately, were drawn out introspectives or flashback descriptions of a character’s past which I simply needed to plow through to hopefully get back to the good stuff again. The team members know their chances of living past the next battle are not good, so their down time is predictably crude and filled with hard drinking. Not especially fun to read about. Some of the characters are already broken, even at the beginning of the novel. I think I know what the author was trying to do with this "character building" but it didn't really work for me.