Certain Dark ThingsSilvia Moreno-Garcia
Thomas Dunne Books
October 25th, 2016
Mexico City is supposed to be the one Mexican city free of vampires. Sanitation does more than just monitor for people with the deadly Croneng’s Disease, and most of the ways in and out of the city are supposed to be tightly controlled.
Everywhere else, the vampire drug cartels fight bloody wars over territory, respect, and business. Mexico City only worries about human gangs.
Domingo didn’t expect to meet someone as glamorous and beautiful as Atl. He’s a street kid that picks garbage for sellable thermoplastics. She looks like a model, and has a gigantic bioengineered doberman as a pet.
Atl is a vampire, of an ancient Aztec subspecies. She’s on the run from a rival cartel, interlopers who killed her family. They’re of the Necros subspecies, sharp toothed and always ravenous. She didn’t mean to pick up a stray like Domingo, but she’s hungry and desperate.
Nick Godoy has followed Atl to Mexico City. He’s careless, violent and sloppy, and won’t stop til he kills her. He’s the bane of his bodyguard Rodrigo’s existence, but tracking Atl down and babysitting Nick is all part of the job description.
Ana Aguirre is a cop known for having been a vampire killer, so naturally when Nick leaves a snack dead in an alley, Ana gets assigned the case. No one respects her, and no one really expects the case to go anywhere. She may have to enlist some unconventional help to solve this one, and rid her city of the vampires she moved to Mexico City to escape.
Certain Dark Things gives us a reason to love vampire novels again. It’s something new, with a fresh perspective I’ve not seen before. It’s a slick, smart, bloody novel with characters that are all too human–even when they’re not. It should be on everyone’s Halloween reads list this October 25th.
JL Jamieson is a strange book nerd who writes technical documents by day, and book news, reviews, and other assorted opinions for you by night. She is working on her own fiction, and spends time making jewelry to sell at local conventions, as well as stalking the social media accounts of all your favorite writers.