A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising by Raymond Villareal – Review

Published: June 5, 2018

Publisher: Mulholland Books

Series: Standalone

Genre: Horror, Fiction

Pages: 432 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 3.5/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

A virus that turns people into something somehow more than human quickly sweeps the world, upending society as we know it.

This panoramic thriller begins with one small mystery. The body of a young woman found in an Arizona border town, presumed to be an illegal immigrant, walks out of the town morgue. To the young CDC investigator called in to consult the local police, it’s a bizarre medical mystery.

More bodies, dead of a mysterious disease that solidifies their blood, are brought to the morgue, and disappear. In a futile game of catch-up, the CDC, the FBI, and the US government must come to terms with what they’re too late to stop: an epidemic of vampirism that will sweep first the United States, and then the world.

Impossibly strong, smart, poised, beautiful, and commanding, these vampires reject the term as derogatory, preferring the euphemistic “gloamings.” They quickly rise to prominence in all aspects of modern society: sports, entertainment, and business. Soon people are begging to be ‘re-created,’ willing to accept the risk of death if their bodies can’t handle the transformation. The stakes change yet again when a charismatic and wealthy businessman, recently turned, decides to do what none of his kind has done before: run for political office.

This sweeping yet deeply intimate fictional oral history–told from the perspectives of several players on all sides of the titular vampire uprising–is a genre-bending, shocking, immersive and subversive debut that is as addictive as the power it describes.

---

I picked this up on a whim thinking it would be a bizarre, light summer read. It was somewhat bizarre but lacked in the light department and ended up being a fairly serious book overall. That’s not entirely a bad thing, but I was expecting some laughs from this book and one of the only things I laughed at was the fact that Taylor Swift decided to become a vampire, or “gloaming” as they call themselves here.

This book follows several POVs all in contact with different parts of the gloaming outbreak. The main POV is that of Dr. Lauren Gomez who has the unfortunate luck of getting called in on the first case of the outbreak. It’s not every day that you have a death where the victim has no blood left and only a pair of small punctures and then said victim decides that they’re no longer dead. Bodies shouldn’t just leave the morgue, you know. The other main POV is that of Father John Reilly, a catholic priest who ultimately ends up in a group of like-minded individuals that don’t like the fact that gloamings are taking over the church. They’re like a pseudo-terror group. Pretty wild for priests. There are a few other POVs but at this point I can’t remember too much about them and don’t feel like flipping through the book to find out their names and other relevant details. One guy worked for the government, another worked for a gloaming getting into politics… you get the jist.

The story overall was pretty cool and gave a number of interesting perspectives on the drastic change undergoing society. I wish there had been more than the briefest (and questionable) glimpse of the gloaming perspective. I know it’s called A People’s History, but it still would have been cool. Not surprisingly, the gloamings are portrayed as an insular, snobbish group of society’s rich, famous, good-looking, and artistic people. Quickly after they become common knowledge, they begin pushing for rights, accommodations for their intolerance of sunlight, and start taking over the important positions in government, pop-culture, and religion. Ray Villareal portrayed something really interesting and unique here that I think most vampire novels ignore all together. He actually writes something deep about the new presence of powerful, long lived beings in our society rather than the powerful, rich vampires being relegated to a teenage love interest that sparkles. Are we going to see cool vampires again? I hope so!

Overall, this was one of the more unique vampire books I’ve read and it was actually pretty good. Towards the end it started to slow down in pace and my interest began to wane, hence the reason for the 3.5-star rating. I didn’t love this book, but I definitely liked it and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to someone looking for a vampire book that isn’t in the realm of sparkling teenage vampire books *cough cough Twilight*.