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otherwyrld's review against another edition
3.0
An entertaining read all round, I don't think you need to know much about the whole 30 Days of Night franchise to enjoy this book. A young teenager in London is saved from a vampire attack by his sister, who herself became a vampire five years previously. She belongs to a group called the Humains, who don't feed off humans and who want to live peacefully with them. The other vampires though, are not so pleasant. Added to this is the mystery of an object called the Bane which is said to either confer great power on a vampire - or provide the means to destroy them utterly. The race is on between the two groups to gain access to the power of the Bane, a chase that leads through the underground spaces of London and to a final confrontation in the British Museum.
If I have a criticism of the story, it's that it could be any old vampire story, because the connections with 30 Days of Night is fairly marginal - a few mentions of the events in Barrow, a quick phone call with Stella Olemaun (from the original comic and film adaptation) for information, the general description of the vampires, which are more like the quick zombies from 28 Days Later than more traditional vampires. None of that matters really, because it's just a good story. The characters of Rose and her brother Marty are engaging and you really want them to win out against the nasty vampires. There's a good supporting cast on both sides to root for or against. There is a good deal of well described gore and body horror, and the author does a good job of describing how it feels to be a vampire fighting against the constant hunger for blood. The Bane itself turns out to be a bit of a McGuffin as it
This seems to be the last story written in this universe (there are four previous novels as well as about a dozen graphic novels). This is a shame because the universe described here could be expanded quite considerably. I shall have to track down the other stories and read them as well.
3 1/2 stars
If I have a criticism of the story, it's that it could be any old vampire story, because the connections with 30 Days of Night is fairly marginal - a few mentions of the events in Barrow, a quick phone call with Stella Olemaun (from the original comic and film adaptation) for information, the general description of the vampires, which are more like the quick zombies from 28 Days Later than more traditional vampires. None of that matters really, because it's just a good story. The characters of Rose and her brother Marty are engaging and you really want them to win out against the nasty vampires. There's a good supporting cast on both sides to root for or against. There is a good deal of well described gore and body horror, and the author does a good job of describing how it feels to be a vampire fighting against the constant hunger for blood. The Bane itself turns out to be a bit of a McGuffin as it
Spoiler
doesn't appear to actually do anything, in the end it just seems to be a lump of metal that was dug out of the groundThis seems to be the last story written in this universe (there are four previous novels as well as about a dozen graphic novels). This is a shame because the universe described here could be expanded quite considerably. I shall have to track down the other stories and read them as well.
3 1/2 stars
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