The climate in Kansas is not for the meek. The wind blows a gazillion miles an hour most of the time. The sun bleaches the color out of everything turning the landscape a light shade of gray or dusty brown. The high temperatures in the summer evaporates water leaving ponds a muddy muck. High pressure systems and low pressure systems collide dropping golf ball size hail, pelting us with wind driven rain, and spawning monstrous, howling, black twisters. In the winter time that same wind burns our cheeks worse than sun burns. Ice storms drop power lines and freeze our roads into chicken shit slick icy disasters. (Worse spill of my life was on frozen chicken shit.)
Vampire Central just keep on drivin'.
The people here reflect their environment. They are used to disappointment. They are used to having the weather intrude on their finances and their health. They are stubborn, quiet, tough of as nails, capable, and practical to a fault. Vampires? Well to these people that is just another predator that needs to be eradicated. Munch down on their cows and you'll find yourself hunted down and blasted into Vampire paste.
When I saw this book I was excited because I was hoping that finally somebody had written a book about vampire cows.
Well unfortunately I was wrong about that. Cows are fed on by vampires, but do not resurrect themselves into vampires. Dang it. Despite that disappointment I was taken in by Alan Ryker's sparse writing style. There might be purple sage, but no purple prose. His words reflect the people and add to the landscape of the book.
Keith Harris, our anti-hero hero is a hard drinking, rednecked, asshole who finds himself in the unlikely role of trying to save his cattle and his neighbors (secondary thought) from an invasion of pale skinned, night scavenging predators. The loss of his wife has left him unmoored, anti-social, and nursing a hair trigger temper. When something starts gnawing on his cattle he takes matters into his own hands, capturing a vampire, and using him as protection for his herd. Lets just say things spin out of control from there and the reader is put on a galloping horse pursued by shrieking, blood thirsty vampires. You will swallow this book in one gulp simply because you will have no choice, at a sparse 130 pages you will find yourself sucking the marrow from the bones of this tale and your coffee will be cold by the time you remember to drink it.
For people who like [a:Joe R. Lansdale|58971|Joe R. Lansdale|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1200406474p2/58971.jpg] you will love this book.