Vampyrrhic is scary, and creepy, and the type of book that would make a great movie. The story is about four people in the town of Leppington (which is in England). In the book, Leppington was founded by a family of the same name, who had a dark and mysterious history.
Once, the town was prosperous, and many people were employed at the local slaughterhouse that sits in the middle of town. But now, the town is past its prime, and no one is happy to be there.
The book focuses on four main characters. None of them know each other when the story starts. They soon find themselves drawn together and involved in a prophesy that gets revealed in bits and pieces as the story goes on. It all ties together really well!
Bernice works in the leech farm in town, and is staying in the town’s only hotel. She has become obsessed with a video tape she found in the hotel that shows an American man who is doing a documentary about Leppington. He disappears, and Bernice is constantly thinking about him. She wants to find him.
Electra owns the hotel, which seems to be the place where people go to kill themselves. Both her parents died while living and working in the hotel. There also seems to be something weird going on in the basement. It’s a really dark, damp, creepy cellar. There is a giant door with several padlocks on it. Electra’s mom claimed that she heard voices behind that door right before she died. Now, Electra is hearing voices and noises from back there, too.
Jack Black, whose real name could be anything at all, is basically a thug. He yells, breaks things, beats people up. He seems hell bent on stealing stuff, and is in the process of doing so when he finds himself drawn back into the town of Leppington. Jack Black is a scary guy with scars and tattoos on his face. He has a superhuman pain tolerance, and also reads minds.
Then, there is David Leppington, last descendant of the Leppington line. He has come back to town to visit his uncle, who he has not seen since he was six-years-old. The uncle reveals some very strange things about the family history him, which David vaguely remembers from when he was tiny. David decides he doesn’t believe anything he was told. But then, people start going missing and turn up “dead”, leaving David to wonder just what he should be doing now.
Much of the book is about thinking the monster is going to jump out and get the characters. It’s scary! It is also very creepy, and really bloody.The only difficulty I had with this book was that it is very British (and I am an American). It’s “the lift”, not the elevator. It’s a “Chinese bringing-back”, instead of Chinese carry-out. Once I got used to that, the book got better.
Vampyrric is way more detailed than I ever expected it to be. The family legend is brilliant, and I like the way the characters get connected to each other. It’s also what I think of as a real horror story – it’s scary, and gory, and NOT a love story thing at all. There are vampires in this book, and they are different from the vampires in other books that I’ve read. Some are zombie-like, others are traditional, and there are some who seem to be possessed by a darker force.
This book review of Vampyrrhic – by Simon Clark is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.
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