| 99 COFFINS by David Wellington (Three Rivers 2007) |
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| Written by admin | |
 This is the second in Wellington's vampire trilogy, following 13 Bullets (online text,), with Vampire Zero still to come.Whereas 13 Bullets is a fast-paced, straightforward action/horror tale that establishes the story-world, the conventions, and the main characters, in 99 Coffins Wellington slows things down a little in the beginning and mixes them up in interesting ways. An archaeological dig at Gettysburg turns up 99 coffins, and the skeletons inside clearly belonged to vampires. Fanatically obsessed with wiping out all vampires, retired U.S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley of course wants to get involved in the case, but the events of 13 Bullets left hims so gruesomely mangled and broken that he's just physically not up to it. State trooper Laura Caxton has plenty of scars herself--mostly psychological, stemming from all the horrible things she saw and did and suffered in her last encounters with vampires, under Arkeley's tutelage--so she strongly resists when Arkeley tries to drag her in to be, basically, an able body for his still-sharp mind. He doesn't take no for an answer, however, and so, once again, she finds herself plunged into a nightmare. At first, things don't look so bad. All the vampire skeletons are missing their hearts, so they should be truly dead, unable to return to unlife. But Caxton has a bad feeling about the missing hundredth coffin she knows in her gut ought to be there. And sure enough, a vampire soon is running loose. What about the rest of those coffins? Hmmm . . . well, what's that Chekhov quote about a gun? When the full-scale action finally erupts, it's fast, wild, and gory. Juxtaposed with the present-day story is the running backstory of how all those vampires came to be buried at Gettysburg. The Civil War angle is novel enough that it may sound odd or even gimmicky, but it turns out to be organically integral to the story, Wellington seems to handle it with assurance and authority, and it does bring something fresh to the vampire genre. This has gotten great reviews at SciFi, Skullring, Dread Central, and Apex. |
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