Review Blog Tour: The Vampire Circus, di Rod Kierkegaard

Genere: Horror, dark-fantasy

Editore: Curiosity Quills Press

Data di uscita: June 1, 2015

Cover Artist: Rod Kierkegaard

Lo trovate online: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Goodreads

Trama:

It is June of 1923. After serving twenty years on death row for executing five vampires, members of a traveling circus who had killed his wife and son, the 65-year-old Johnny Durango is pardoned and set free. Now penniless, the former best-selling author of a series of cowboy detective memoirs based on his life as a Pinkerton operative in the Old West, travels to San Francisco to empty his sole remaining bank account. And discovers that he is now worth twelve million dollars, as the result of owning a long-forgotten block of Atlantic-Richfield stock. With his newfound wealth, Durango resolves to travel to Europe and track drown the remaining members of the vampire circus troupe who murdered his family.

In Paris, meanwhile, Columbine Zwellinger (Coco), the Swiss-born young authoress who serves as editor and ghostwriter to her lecherous, syphilitic much-older husband Hugo Urbaine-Damon, is unexpectedly reunited with her long-lost twin sister, the American Zuleika (Zuzu). Both young women are the daughters of a black mother, a former circus performer, and a white Swiss doctor, now mysteriously dead. Zuzu is the freshly discovered sensation of Paris, the “Black Venus”, for her singing and “Negro” jazz-dancing act in the nude. Coco, who has passed for white all her life, envies Zuzu her freedom and longs to emulate it; however, she is constrained by feelings of responsibility for her increasingly insane husband, whom she despises, and Hugo’s mistress Minout, who lives with them.

Though she is unaware of it, Coco is worshipped from afar by her newspaper delivery boy, the fifteen-year-old Willy de Groote. Willy lives with his mother and uncle, Père Rémy, the parish priest, in the presbytery of a nearby church. Uncle Rémy, a former sergeant in the French Foreign Legion, is a vampire-hunter for the Vatican and is training the diminutive Willy to succeed him. Their murder of a predatory horla, a lawless predatory breed of vampire created by the evil Maître du Monde (Master of the World), brings them to the attention of Superintendent Alphonse Jauvet of the Paris Judiciary Police, who sets out to solve the riddles posed by the crime.

On his way from San Francisco to New York City, Johnny Durango is twice nearly killed by Corsican assassins, whom he suspects are vampires; in both cases, he and his newly engaged “secketary”, Emmeline Parry, barely manage to escape with their lives. Once aboard the Berengaria, he embarks on an affaire with a married Frenchwoman, Berthe Hadley, the younger sister of Superintendant Jauvet. Zuzu, making the round of Paris’ night clubs with her many lovers, is introduced to the eccentric Baron Emile Warburg, the wealthiest man in France, and his business partner the Marchesa dell’Ogg, who runs the exclusive brothel, La Bagne Rose, reputedly a club for vampires.

The battle lines between the vampires and the vampire-hunters are being drawn. Willy’s uncle Rémy is shot through the lung by the vampire they have stalked and killed, and lies gravely wounded in his bedroom at the presbytery. Finding the key to a hotel room in the dead vampire’s pocket, Willy burgles his effects and finds a cache of diamonds. With these he plans to rescue Coco from her husband.

Both Warburg and the Contessa do the bidding of the Master, who is the oldest vampire left alive in the world. And the Master, who has been in Bavaria grooming the young horla, Adolf Hitler, has plans for Coco and Zuzu, who are unknowingly doomed by their genetic heritage to become vampires themselves…

Recensione:

Se si parla di vampiri, si sa, io leggo qualsiasi cosa.
Ecco perchè sono stata attirata da questo titolo che purtroppo mi ha deluso.
Mi ha deluso soprattutto perchè non è un romanzo completo, ma solo la prima parte. O almeno così pare, dato che ad un certo punto della storia (l'80% del kindle) c'è scritto che continua nella seconda parte, ma indovinate un po', la seconda parte non c'è. Al suo posto c'è invece un'anteprima di un altro libro dell'autore. Questa cosa mi ha leggermente seccato, perchè come posso io adesso dare un giudizio su un libro incompleto?
E a cosa serve darmi un'anteprima di un altro romanzo se non posso nemmeno finire quello che sto leggendo?
Comunque, in questo racconto troviamo alcuni elementi tipici dei racconti con vampiri, tra cui anche la presenza di un cacciatore di vampiri deciso a sterminarli.
I capitoli si alternano nella narrazione tra i vari personaggi. Nel complesso è ben scritto, i personaggi sono piuttosto ben strutturati e c'è una bella atmosfera dark. Anche se ad un certo punto fa la sua comparsa Hitler e il vampiro più antico del mondo, cosa che mi ha molto incuriosito. Ma poi si interrompe tutto, quindi adesso questa curiosità me la tengo.
Ci sono delle scene di sesso piuttosto esplicite e volgari, messe abbastanza a random e anche inaspettatamente, tanto che sono andata a rileggermi la pagina prima per vedere se c'erano i presupposti per trovarsi a leggere una scena simile. Non c'erano.
Il livello della lingua è medio bassa direi, non è così difficile da leggere, anche se non si è molto esperti.
Notare che la trama è quasi più lunga del libro. LOL
Nel complesso una lettura passabile, ma il voto è stato abbassato perchè non so come va a finire.

Voto:

L'autore:

 

Rod Kierkegaard, Jr. is a writer and cartoonist.  He lives in Washington, DC.

Known in the US for his comic strip, “Rock Opera”, which ran as a regular feature in Heavy Metal Magazine, he is also the author of two French graphic novel collections, “Stars Massacre”, (released in the US as “Shooting Stars”) and “Rock Monstres”, both published by Editions Albin Michel, Paris.

His first novel, “Obama Jones & The Logic Bomb”, is published by Dogma Press.  ”The Department of Magic” and “Family Cursemas (Megamilionnaire Murders, Vol. 1) ” were Rod’s first published works through Curiosity Quills Press in 2011, followed by “The God Particle” in early 2012. Curiosity Quills Press published “Adultery” (Book 1 of the Scarlet Alphabet) in September 2014.  In October 2014, Rod co-authored “The Dead Detective” with JR Rain. “The Ghosts of Christmas Present”, a collection of short stories with JR Rain,  is scheduled for release December 2014.