Series Review: Vampire World

 

Vampire War is about a future where the entire world has been overrun by feral vampires. The remnants of humanity live in a giant airship that flies around in perpetual sunlight. The series follows Alex Goddard and her team, friends, and enemies as they work to protect humanity and solve the mystery of the vampire apocalypse over six action-packed books.

I had an absolute blast with this series. Someone, please, pick this up as either a set of action movies, or better yet, an X-COM style video game. Cruising around the world in an airship fighting vampires? Sign me up! I listened to the first few books on audio, but was so excited to see what came next, that I switched over to e-book to get through them faster. Since I burned through them so quickly, it's going to be easier for me to write a full series review rather than parse out each individual book. I'm going to keep this mostly spoiler-free like a regular review and only hint at plot points in the later books. However, some spoilers are inevitable, so proceed with caution. Or better yet - get a copy of the books yourself, read them, then see what I think.

Before I dive in, I will note that the series is fun, but not flawless. It takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to get through some parts, but if you keep in the back of your mind that this is an action movie, the series works. Often throughout the adventures, people will arrive in the nick of time, recover from incredible injuries too easily, and complete feats of physical prowess that are beyond most humans. They aren't superheroes, but the characters are action stars. This especially applies to our lead character, Alex Goddard.

Mouthy, obnoxious, kick-ass, loyal, brave Alex Goddard is the star of the series. In book 1, she was a risk-taking brat who has a problem with authority and I did not like her. However, as her maturity and competence grew throughout the books, I fell in love with her. So much so that I modeled one of my X-COM 2 characters after her.

X-COM Alex

Alex is part of, and eventually leads, the Ground Mission Team, or GMT. They are an elite group that make regular missions to the Earth to gather supplies, electronics, and anything else needed for humanity's survival. Alex is cocky and that leads the team into some early trouble, but she learns lessons quickly and becomes a strong leader. She guides her team with compassion and understanding, and she is always willing to fight for what she feels is right and what she cares about. She was a delight of a main character and a true strong female lead in the best sense of the term.

Despite this being like an action movie, some tropes are avoided. Other than characters acknowledging she is attractive, there is no time spent describing her body in detail. In fact, there is very little reference to anyone's bodies throughout the book, and any romance or sex is light and off the page. Alex is never damselled and characters may have doubts about her abilities at sometimes, but she never has to do any of the poor-writing tropey things like fend off would-be rapists to prove she's bad-ass. For a series written by two men, that's awesome.

A second character I'd like to write about is Bryan. He is the nerdy inventor who supplies Alex and the GMT with most of their gadgets. Again, an action movie mindset will help with this character. He's a little too good at too many things, but he is a delightful character, and the relationship that develops between him and Alex as colleagues and friends is well done.

The plot is beyond engaging and the authors are good at putting our characters into tight spot after tight spot while continuing to ramp up the stakes. They also aren't shy about killing off major characters, so be prepared for that. Despite stretching my suspension of belief at times, the answers to everything that happens are well-thought out and make sense in the world. The conclusion is strong and wraps up the story. Some things are left open for possible further adventures, but not in an egregious way. In fact, the last book does promise a potential story in the same universe is forthcoming, but it has been over five years without any further word, so I'm not holding my breath.

Before I read this series, I had never heard of either off the authors, P. T. Hylton and Jonathan Benecke. Hylton has written several other books including Found Shadows - a ghost story, The Deadlock Trilogy - a sci-fi suspense series, and the Storms of Magic - a pirate adventure series. Prior to writing, he made short films and hosted several podcasts. 

Benecke was a little harder to find information on, as he doesn't seem to have his own website. Goodreads lists no other books by him and all I could find was his Amazon bio which mentions that he enjoys movies and co-hosted the Movie Fixers podcast.

Overall this is a fun, adventurous series that I could see myself reading again one day.

Thanks for reading! 

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