http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JST3OC
This month, I wasn’t sure about which book to write. I hadn’t read any thing ‘transformative’ in a while, but just the same I wasn’t feeling the need to educate or better myself. No what I wanted was a good, rousing story that I could leap into while plunked down on the leather sofa.
In need of inspiration, I turned to the old standby Fang Fiction, perhaps more commonly known as vampire literature. There is, as most of you know, a surfeit of tales regarding all manner of supernatural creatures on the bookshelves (both real and virtual) these days. Most feature a vampire or nosferatu as I like to call them, in some incarnation or other. I perused several, but none caught my fancy, then it happened. I discovered The Loneliest Vampire in NYC.
The Loneliest Vampire in NYC is a wonderfully original novel. Ostensibly about said lonely vampire of the book’s title (Stanley) it is in fact a well-crafted mystical adventure story. Although it is fast-paced enough to entertain even the most benumbed, video game addicted reader, it still finds time to go into the back stories of several key characters and help create a rich universe for these characters to inhabit.
It was in fact in these asides that I found the author, Alan Forsythe, to be at his most masterful in his writing. I found myself rereading the stories (within the story) of Chung Lee Soo and Chester K. Elliot and relished their magical realism.
As a fan of history I also enjoyed the ‘mash-up’ elements, where historical figures and places were melded into the plot.
As I noted, this is hardly great literature, but it is a great take on a genre that has seen a great deal of redundancy in recent years. The author has hinted he has plans to continue the story as a series or at least another book. I do hope this is the case and I look forward to the continuing adventures of Stanley, his misfit companions and his ladylove.
- Jackson Maxwell, Sea to Sky News.
