Vampires

BOOK REVIEW: This Charming Man by C.K. McDonnell

/ E.A. Hoffmann / 1 Comment

Title: This Charming Man

Author: C.K. McDonnell

Book Length: 497 Pages

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Humor, Vampires, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy

Read Start Date: July 7, 2023

Read Finish Date: August 7, 2023

Number of Book in Series: 2

Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: Vampires do not exist. Everyone knows this. So it’s particularly annoying when they start popping up around Manchester .

Nobody is pleased about it. Not the Founders, the secret organisation for whom vampires were invented as an allegory, nor the Folk, the magical people hidden in plain sight who only want a quiet life. And definitely not the people of Manchester, because there is nothing more irksome than being murdered by an allegory run amok. Somebody needs to sort this out fast before all Hell really breaks loose – step forward the staff of The Stranger Times.

It’s not like they don’t have enough to be dealing with. Assistant Editor Hannah has come back from getting messily divorced to discover that someone is trying to kidnap a member of their staff and while editor Vincent Banecroft would be delighted to see the back of any of his team, he doesn’t like people touching his stuff – it’s the principle of the thing.

Throw in a precarious plumbing situation, gambling debts, an entirely new way of swearing, and a certain detective inspector with what could be kindly referred to as ‘a lot of baggage’ and it all adds up to another hectic week in the life of the newspaper committed to reporting the truth that nobody else will touch.

My Review: The characters from The Stranger Times are back and as hilarious as ever. Instead of telling you how great the book is, I’m just going to share some of my favorite quotes from the book below.

“‘But we haven’t got running water’, said Grace.

‘Yes,’ said Banecroft. ‘The good Lord has blessed me with many gifts, including male genitalia. Ergo, I can pee anywhere. Out of windows, in woods, in that plant pot beside your desk…’

‘Don’t you dare,’ warned Grace.

Banecroft waved a hand theatrically in the air as he left the room. ‘Too late!’

Grace looked around the room. ‘He wouldn’t, would he?’

Her colleagues avoided her gaze.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she sighed, ‘I need to go and burn an asparagus fern.'”

page 62-63

“Vincent Banecroft slipped through he doors of the Kanky’s Rest pub and looked around him. He’d never been here before and yet he knew the place well. It was a proper old fellas pub. Everything was made out of hardened wood or worn leather, including the clienetele.”

Page 135

“Hannah shook her head. ‘How has he got this far in life without anyone stabbing him?’

‘I heard that,’ roared Banecroft from the other room. ‘Shows what you know. I’ve been stabbed twice!'”

page 201

“On the day Banecroft went to pass his driving test on the first time, Patrick, the instructor who’d had to endure the stresses of teaching him, resigned in protest at a system that was broke beyond belief. He retrained in a less stressful profession and ended up being awarded a medal for his work as a bomb-disposal technician.”

page 415

Stats: As of writing this review on September 3, 2023, this book has an average rating of 4.39 stars. As you can see, many people think this book is great, so you don’t have to take only my word for it.

Recommended? YES! YES! YES!

Other Books in the Series (that I have read)

Title: The Stranger Times

Author: C.K. McDonnell

Book Length: 424 pages

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy, Mystery, Crime, Magic

Read Start Date: May 28, 2023

Read Finish Date: June 15, 2023

No. of Book in Series: 1

Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: There are Dark Forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular) and so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them. A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but more often the weird) of modern life, it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable . . .

At least that’s their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and
-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little (and believes less) of the publication he edits, while his staff are a ragtag group of wastrels and misfits, each with their own secrets to hide and axes to grind. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door – and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who’s got her own set of problems.

It’s when tragedy strikes in Hannah’s first week on the job that The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious, proper, actual investigative journalism. What they discover leads them to a shocking realisation: that some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly, gruesomely real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker foes than they could ever have imagined. It’s one thing reporting on the unexplained and paranormal but it’s quite another being dragged into the battle between the forces of Good and Evil . . .

See my review of this book here.

BOOK REVIEW: Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom by Cameron Pierce

/ E.A. Hoffmann / 1 Comment

Title: Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom

Author: Cameron Pierce

Book Length: 172 pages

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Genre: Fiction, Bizarro Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Lovecraftian, Vampires

Read Start Date: June 17, 2023

Read Finish Date: June 22, 2023

Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: Franz and Lola are vampires in love. They live in a cottage near the sea with their little vampire baby.

Burn Girl is a lonely girl who walks along the bottom of the sea, constantly on fire. The water doesn’t put her fire out or soothe her burns. It only makes her feel like she’s wearing an itchy wool sweater.

Bruno is the buffest vampire. He is building Muscle Island, a floating fortress comprised of mussels.

The Vampire Science Council has been working for centuries to prevent the depletion of their arctic planet’s blood supply, but the blood has finally run out.

Cyrus Lugosi’s friends want to slaughter him as part of a ritual sacrifice that will raise Cthulhu from his tomb at the bottom of the sea. There are just two The closest thing to the Necronomicon they’ve got is a unicorn coloring book, and Cthulhu is more interested in his quest for the perfect hamburger.

Their fates will converge when Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom .

My Review: This is a hard review to write. I got this book from the library, having never heard of it before. What called my attention to it at first was the name Cthulhu in the title. While I have several Lovecraft books on my shelf, I have not yet read them, and was intrigued about the author’s take on this Lovecraftian character.

I was pretty quickly turned off from the moment I started reading. Franz and Lola are a vampire couple, who have a vampire baby. In the first few lines, the baby is dead, Lola has drunk his blood, and the pair have dismembered the baby’s corpse. There was no emotions felt from either parent, and as a parent myself, I was not amused. I know its supposed to “bizarre” or whatever, but it just didn’t sit well with me.

Then they decide to use the baby’s body to summon Cthulhu in hopes of saving their dying planet. The results of the summoning are not what they expected, which leads to even more superfluous scenes of violence (like cutting up dozens of vampires to make one large mega vampire to fight Cthulhu).

There were many such scenes where I wanted to gag.

I am not a person who can put down a book once starting it, so I reluctantly kept reading, but it was slow going.

Stats: As of writing this review (August 8, 2023), this book has a 3.81 rating on Goodreads. My 2 stars therefore falls rather far from the average reader of this book. So, while I will not recommend it, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good book, or that you might feel differently upon reading it.

Recommended? No.