Deadtown series

## Genre Information

Urban Fantasy
Zombies

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

## About the Series

* **Genres:** Urban Fantasy
* **Theme:**
* **Narrative style**: First person narrative told by Victory “Vicky” Vaughn.

## Series Description =

The paranormal world is dominated by zombies in the aftermath of a recent worldwide plague, which affected humans, but not supernaturals.

## Books in Series

1. Deadtown (A Deadtown Novel Book 1) (2009)
2. Hellforged (A Deadtown Novel Book 2) (2010)
3. Bloodstone (A Deadtown Novel Book 3) (2011)
4. Darklands (A Deadtown Novel Book 4) (2012)
5. Hellhound (A Deadtown Novel Book 5) (2013)
6. Firestorm (A Deadtown Novel Book 6) (2017)

## World Building

### Setting

**Deadtown**, a quarantined section of Boston that is the legally designated permanent home for all paranormal residents.

### World

Victory Vaughn is a shapeshifting professional demon hunter living in Boston’s mandatory ‘paranormal reservation’ known as Deadtown. In Deadtown, things that go bump in the night (werewolves, vampires etc.) have always been around but the world at large has only just learned of their existence. And the coming out process has been anything but smooth. Zombies, or Previously Deceased Humans, are a different story. A few years ago a plague hit Boston instantly killing a couple hundred thousand people and then reanimating them a la Night of the Living Dead (except without all the mindless “Brains! Must eat brains!” mantra). The initial happiness of the living having their loved ones back from the dead didn’t last long. Blood red eyes, green/gray flesh in varying levels of decay, and a tendency to go a bit stereotypically zombie around fresh blood will put a damper on even the most open-minded human. The result? Deadtown was created, the only legal place for the non-human monsters, or Paranormal Americans, to reside.

The zombies in this series are not the evil, brain-sucking monsters of The Walking Dead. Instead, these zombies are relatively normal (except for their physical rot and attraction to human blood), and they hold many of the service jobs in Boston (e.g., janitors, waitresses, doormen, cab drivers). Some of them even serve on a branch of the Boston Police Department called the Goon Squad, which specializes in paranormal crime. Other types of paranormals in this world include vampires, shifters, and demons, with the demons being the evil villains. Holzner has, however, contributed to the humor of the series with demons like Glitches, which infest computers. (Didn't you always suspect that glitches were demons?)

*Deadtown*, a quarantined section of Boston that is the legally designated permanent home for all paranormal residents, all of whom have very few civil rights in Massachusetts and no rights at all in most of the other forty-nine states. There is, of course, an anti-supernatural group, *Humans First*, that rants continually against the paranormal community. Politically correct people use terms, like "paranormal Americans" (PA) instead of "monsters" and "previously deceased humans" instead of "zombies," but most humans are just plain fearful of all supernaturals. If a paranormal travels between human and paranormal zones in Boston, he or she must complete reams of paperwork and be subjected to several intrusive checkpoints along the way.

### Protagonist

Victory “Vicky” Vaughn
is a *Cerddorion* (pronounced ker-THOR-yon), a shape-shifter who specializes in killing demons. She lives in *Deadtown*.
Vicky’s Cerddorion talents include the ability to *shape-change into any sentient being*, but her shifts are limited to three per month. As is true of most UF heroines, Vicky has had an unhappy childhood during which she accidentally called forth a powerful demon (*Difethwr, the Destroyer*) that killed her father and left its mark on Vicky. That mark has caused Vicky to succumb to mind-blowing rage at emotional times during the past ten years, severely limiting her social life. Vicky is demon exterminator; she gets rids of people's personal demons—the ones who haunt their nightmares. Most of Vicky’s clients are norms (i.e., normal humans, aka bloodbags), so Vicky must walk a thin line between the human world of greater Boston and the craziness of Deadtown. Vicky’s sister, *Gwen*, has adopted a norm life. She turned her back on her Cerddorion heritage by marrying a human and having children. Giving birth banishes a Cerddorion’s demon-killing abilities
## Book Descriptions

Deadtown (2009)
They call it Deadtown: the city’s quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its borders — but Victory Vaughn, Boston’s only professional demon slayer, isn’t exactly human…
Vicky’s demanding job keeping the city safe from all manner of monsters is one reason her relationship with workaholic lawyer (and werewolf) Alexander Kane is in constant limbo. Throw in a foolhardy zombie apprentice, a mysterious demon-plagued client, and a suspicious research facility that’s taken an unwelcome interest in her family, and Vicky’s love life has as much of a pulse as Deadtown’s citizens. But now Vicky’s got bigger things to worry about. The Hellion who murdered her father ten years ago has somehow broken through Boston’s magical protections. The Hellion is a ruthless force of destruction with a personal grudge against Vicky, and she’s the only one who can stop the demon before it destroys the city and everyone in it.
Hellforged (2010)
After Vicky banished her demon nemesis to the fiery depths of Hell, she thought life would return to normal. But considering she has a werewolf lawyer boyfriend, a zombie apprentice who’s angling to become a pop star, and an eccentric vampire roommate, what is normal, anyway? Then the supposedly banished Hellion starts to trespass in Vicky’s dreams—just as several of Deadtown’s zombies are viciously attacked and become really dead. When Vicky realizes she’s the only connection between the victims, she suspects that the **demon** is somehow working through her dreams to become Deadtown’s living nightmare. What she doesn’t know is that her old enemy brings with it a force more terrifying—and deadly—than anything she’s battled before.
Bloodstone (2011)
Boston’s diverse South End is known for its architecture and great restaurants, not its body count. So when mutilated human corpses begin turning up in the area, the entire city takes notice. The killer—dubbed the South End Reaper—uses a curved blade for his grisly work. And even though there’s no real evidence pointing to a paranormal culprit, the deaths are straining the already-tense relations between Boston’s human and inhuman residents. As the bodies pile up, Vicky, her formidable aunt Mab, and her werewolf boyfriend Kane investigate, only to find that the creature behind the carnage is after something much more than blood…
Darklands (2012)
They call it Deadtown: the city’s quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its border—but Victory Vaughn, Boston’s only professional demon slayer, isn’t exactly human*…* Boston’s demons have been disappearing, *and* Vicky’s clients are canceling left and right. While fewer demons might seem like a good thing, Vicky suspects foul play. A missing Celtic cauldron from Harvard’s Peabody museum leads her to an unwelcome conclusion: Pryce, her demi-demon cousin and bitter enemy, is trying to regain his full powers. But Pryce isn’t alone. He’s conjured another, darker villain from Vicky’s past. To stop them from destroying everything she loves, she’ll have to face her own worst fear—in the realm of the dead itself.
Hellhound (2013)
Boston’s zombies have suddenly become inexplicably violent—horror movie-style—resulting in a catastrophic all-out battle against humans. More troubling to Vicky is that she’s had dreams and visions of herself fighting alongside the demons. At least, she hopes they’re just visions—otherwise, that puts her on the front lines of the wrong side of the war. Vicky’s not surprised to discover that Pryce, her demi-demon cousin and loathed adversary, is behind the outbreak of the zombie plague, having formed an unholy pact with the Old Ones. Now, as the violence escalates and alliances shift, Vicky knows she’s the only one who can stop the plague. Unless the pack of hellhounds on her trail finds her first.
Firestorm (2017)
When Vicky allowed an **ancient goddess** to possess her, she had no regrets—it was the only way to protect the people she loved. But now **Ceridwen**, locked in a power struggle with the **Hellion** that long ago claimed Vicky with its mark, refuses to leave. Both beings believe controlling Vicky is the key to winning the coming war for the human realm. Despite the forces pulling her apart, Vicky needs all her wits about her. The **demons of Hell** are growing bold and she can barely keep up with the attacks plaguing the city: **sirens** in the **Mystic River**, goblins snarling traffic on Storrow Drive, imps tearing the gold from the State House dome. As the signs of war multiply and Hell threatens to overrun its
## References

1. ↑ Deadtown 101 | Nancy Holzner, author
2. ↑ All Things Urban Fantasy
3. ↑ Fangtastic
4. ↑ Fang-tastic Fiction: Nancy Holzner: DEADTOWN SERIES