The chill in the air, winds howling and gusting around the house, all while darkness sets in—winter in the Midwest digs its claws in for months of barren landscapes and swaths of quiet solitude. It’s a season where, since a child, I yearn for the magic of adventure. This is the time of the year that I transform from being engulfed by science fiction and gravitate to fantasy novels. From Thanksgiving on, traditionally it’s been Tolkien. This year was different as a result of an unexpected find.
I was thrift surfing around town and picked up a copy from Barby & J.C. Hendee’s The Noble Dead series from a stack of discarded fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Ninety Nine cents was a risk I was willing to take. On the cover, the testimonial compares the series to a mixture of The Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not a great selling point in my eyes, but I still gave it a chance with the expectation that it would be immediately donated back.
I was wrong. Dhampir was delightful: adventurous, slightly suspenseful and intoxicating in the way the authors paint this high fantasy world. The words felt like an adolescent bumbling its way into the world. The characters felt genuine, uncertain of their purpose or path, leaning into the past to understand their situation and not yet capable of realizing their true potential.
Maguire is a vampire slayer who just wants a quiet life. Settling in a seaport town and acquiring ownership of a small tavern, life was becoming normal. With her partner, Leesil, an elf and highly skilled assassin, and Chap, a massive, intelligent silver hound, they realize that their life is anything but normal. Encountering the attention of a powerful and dangerous group of vampires, Maguire has to face the realization that in order to protect her livelihood, she must face the vampires. In doing so, she discovered her true identity—that of the dhampir.
Through research, the authors discovered a practice in medieval Servia and Yugoslavia. People claimed to be dhampirs, the mortal children of vampires. It was a way to exploit superstitious villagers. They would stage elaborate, invisible battles against spirits and then charge the village a large fee for the dhampirs to cleanse. It was history that was brought into the story and deeply helped guide the philosophy of the characters into the world of the Noble Dead.
Within this blue-collar world, Hendee’s created specific rules for the vampires: they kept the traditional invitation rule for their vampires, each vampire has a supernatural power be it controlling animals or manipulating emotions, and transformations were important to Maguire’s realizations.
For the vampires they have lived a peaceful life in the town until word spread of Maguire coming to town. Their fears are what sparked a preemptive war. The climactic fight is imaginative and thrilling flipping page after page of anticipation.
Much of the story is face-paced, and I wish the authors slowed down a little and elaborated more on Maguire’s backstory to get a better feel for her powers. We are discovering her abilities right there with her: the confusion, the anger, the expression of power coursing through her veins.
But for a vampire novel that predated the popularity of Twilight and the paranormal romance genre, it stands strong as a pulpy, dark-toned story.
The book can serve as a closure; it was meant to just be one novel. But knowing there is so much more for this world to develop into (14 volumes total), I visited a local second-hand bookstore and found most of the first series. I look forward to seeing what happens next because I’m now in it for the ride.
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