Review: Fight Club..with a twist
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 10, 2012
Malcom's isn't what people would call a glamorous life.  He's 13 and other than his older brother Rob, an avid drug user and a guy who treats Malcom like a punching bag, he's got nobody and not much of anything, except a drive to find out what happened to his mother who disappeared at a carnival when he was just nine years old and a misplaced duty to protect and take care of his very troubled older brother.  That's why he hangs out on the Fringe with the dregs of society, making bets on illegal death matches.  He's a student of the game.  He knows the fighters inside and out and he's got a knack for winning.  When he finds himself in Canada, he thinks it's just another day in the life, betting on illegal fights and trying to eek out some sort of living when he meets Milkwood.  Fat, ugly and able to take a beating like nobody's business, Milkwood is a perpetual loser.  He enters the fights, suffers inhuman amounts of punishment, takes his pay and moves on to the next town.  There's something more to Milkwood than meets the eye and Malcom is determined to find out what it is, and turn him into the winner he knows he can be.  Things aren't that simple, however, when a sexy and dangerous woman from Milkwood's past comes a'knocking and something even more dangerous is out to get HER.Let's face it, the vampire genre is quickly getting oversaturated with boilerplate plots and characters.  That's not to say there aren't good ones out there (and I do read several long running series featuring the wildly popular creatures of the night on occassion) but many are rife with the same tropes:  Dark, brooding, centuries old vampire with a six pack and long hair falls into forbidden love with troubled girl that's looking for something more out of life.  Blood and Sawdust kicks those conventions right in the fangs (almost literally) and breathes new life into the same ole same ole.  Ridler does a nice job of avoiding sterotypes with his view of vampires.  They're not all rich and powerful, they're not all instantly beautiful when they change.  In Ridler's universe, some are just trying to get by and just BE.  No grand machinations for world domination, no secret cabals, no plans to glamor dozens of women and have their own personal harem and more importantly, the world is NOT inundated by them.Milkwood is a 'jobber'.  In rassling (AKA: Wrestling), that's a guy who gets paid to make bigger stars look good.  He's the son of a wrestler who was famous for being a jobber.  He grew up with the shame that people saw his father as the perpetual loser and actually tried to extracate himself from that shadow by getting a degree in history, but was turned, thus ending his plans for a better life.  He's just trying to get by on the outskirts of society the best he knows how. He's not human, but Ridler lends a very human quality to him.  A troubled guy with a troubled past who, ironically enough, has very human troubles even though he's undead.  When he meets Malcom, he starts to beleive that he can be more than what he already is, he can do better and he doesn't have to get his face kicked in on a nightly basis to scrape by.Malcom and Milkwood are always at odds.  At just 13 years old mingling with a very adult crowd, he can't understand why someone as strong as Milkwood would be happy with just getting his face mashed to pulp.  It's the interplay between the two characters that's really the heart of the story here.  There's plenty of action and fighting and descriptive violence, and yes there are vamps and lowbrows and thugs and other nasties that go bump in the night, but it's really about two completely different individuals, each with their own problems and issues, who bring out growth in one another.  The Fight Club aspect with a slight mix of supernatural beings makes it unique and dark, but this is very much a character driven drama and that's what makes it fun to read.  The characters drive the story.Ridler has a very engrossing style.  He's descriptive and varied and his dialogue is fantastic.  The characters (human or otherwise) come off as very real.  Rather than using a lot of narrative descriptions, the character's emotions and feelings come right through the vivid dialogue, some of the best of which comes from the villains' mouths.  They're dark, menacing and completely twisted.  When the baddies are bad, their words drip with malice and it's great to read.Now, if I do have one complaint (and there is always at least one; no book is perfect) it's that sometimes the narrative can be a little bleak.  It's told through both Milkwood's and Malcom's points of view, and neither of them have reason to be dancing jigs in fuzzy buzzy bunny slippers but sometimes the narrative is overly jaded.  I know the world in which the two characters live and function is an awful one but the negative descriptions and similies/metaphors seem forced at times, like it's trying to drive home the well established point that everyone and everything is bad and dismal.  It doesn't ruin the story and I get what he was trying to do but it just seemed a little redundant at times.In summary (and if you've made it this far you win a no prize!) this was a very enjoyable read.  Blood and Sawdust has an interesting, colorful and very varied cast, an engrossing and well laid out plot, good dialogue and fluid prose that's as descriptive as it is creative.  I admit to being into rassling once upon a time so many of the terms and names weren't lost on me but you don't have to be into sports entertainment to enjoy this.  Remember, this is about the characters and their story and it delivers on that in spades.If you're a fan of the supernatural and are tired of cookie cutter type takes on the undead, give Blood and Sawdust a try.  There are many independent and small press authors out there doing a lot of good work and this shows that Ridler is among them.  He's now on my radar and I'll be reading him in the future.Lots of creatively bloody fun!