Saturday, June 5, 2010

At the End of Church Street by Gregory L. Hall


I picked up At the End of Church Street by Greg Hall because of the hook:

Live forever young. Every night is an adventure—hunting down tourists, challenging the local police, screaming to the world vampires really exist.

The book sounded a little like Peter Pan with vampires...

Who wouldn't want to read that?

Church Street keeps you running the back alleys of Orlando with homeless kids who live together in an abandoned theater as family. They claim to be vampires and live as such until someone, who evidently believes they are vampires, begins killing them with the age-old vampire slaying favorites: a stake through the heart and beheading.

There are twists and turns through the full-throttle narrative which keep the reader propelled toward the "turn it up to eleven" conclusion.

Greg Hall has added some nice layers to the vampire mythos and, instead of playing pansy with his teenaged protagonists, he gives them real life and death choices to face. This isn't a bloody climax slapped on to the end of a sappy love story; Church Street is all climax, all life and death and love.

And in the end, vampires are badass again.

Check it out at Belfire Press or Amazon.com.