Review: 3.5 stars - a promising start to an epic new vampire series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 21, 2011
With A World Torn Asunder, the first installment in Derek Gunn's Vampire Apocalypse series, we enter a world where fuel crisis and economic collapse led to the fracturing of government and society. What better time for the vampires to step out of the shadows and claim the world for themselves? With a submissive population and some all too willing thralls, the vampires quickly took over. That hasn't stopped a small band of resistance fighters, whose guerilla raids on vampire strongholds have provoked a confrontation that may be the start of an all-out war for survival.Aside from the whole vampire thing, the scenario Gunn lays out isn't all that far-fetched, especially in light of recent developments in the economy and our dependence on fossil fuels. You can see how one or two catastrophes could lead to larger collapses. Honestly, I could have read a whole novel just focusing on that aspect, but I do love a good vampire story, and Gunn handles that part well. A World Torn Asunder has a fast pace, tons of well-choreographed action sequences and some very formidable bad guys. The book reads a lot like a movie, so it's easy to visualize the action.Where the book falters a bit is with the main characters. They're not bad, but instead of taking the time to develop each character, Gunn more or less gives us the "back of the baseball card" rundown of back story, personality, physical appearance, etc. It felt forced, and made the characters seem less real. It was much the same with the main villains, who conformed to a predictable type. I felt the book could easily have been twice as long (and twice as effective) if the author had taken more time and developed the characters more naturally. The book could also use one more pass-through by a copy editor just to clean things up and fix some issues with the appearance of the Kindle version.Despite those issues, I really enjoyed Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder and have already orderedDescent Into Chaos (Vampire Apocalypse Book 2). I'd absolutely recommend this series to fans of E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series and Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's Strain trilogy. If nothing else, it's good to see vampires acting like the bloodsucking parasites they are, instead of sparkly love-struck teenagers.