Certain Dark Things

Neon noir vampire fiction, where have you been all my life? At once grimy and sexy, mysterious, alluring, and very violent. I loved so many things about this book - the luridly vivid Mexico City setting, the ominously atmospheric yet wondrous world-building... This is a world in which a fascinating variety of species of vampires exist, with varying abilities, appetites, strengths, weaknesses, and life expectancy. Humans have been aware of the existence of vampires as very real and dangerous creatures since the late 1960s, reacting to this alarming news by doing things like banning them from entire nations and turning cities into fortified, ostensibly vampire-free zones. The characters, human and vampire alike, felt as rich and well-realized as the menacing world around them. If you’re looking for a book like Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, this is not it. But I love how distinct they are from each other. Their wildly different styles make me even more excited to read more of Moreno-Garcia’s work. I have no idea if she plans to write more books in this world. I’d be here for it if she did. Either way, I hope someone options this harrowing and beguiling tale and then throws oceans of cash at the project. Done well, this would make a jaw-dropping and riveting miniseries and, one can only hope, result in some seriously sexy cosplay as well.

Spoiler: the dog lives.

This book does some more original things with the idea of Vampires that I can remember seeing anywhere else: the idea that there are mutliple types of vampires, each quite different, from different parts of the world and adhering to the different myths of that place.

The story takes place a little in the future, and some time not too long ago, people figured out vampires were real, and steps were taken to expell them. Like all human endeavors, this one was undertaken piecemeal, enacted differently by different governements. In Mexico, there are no vampires in Mexico city, but they run drug cartels in the north. Then young Domingo, who makes a living picking garbage in Mexico city, runs into a vampire girl and is instantly smitten.

The vampire girl is Atl, an Aztec vampire, on the run from a competing vampire group who slaughtered her family.

From here it would be quite easy to set up a dark romance, and although Atl and Domingo both feel the pull of that, from the reader's perspective it seems obvious that something more parisitic is happening. Atl does not ring human, and mostly sees humans as cattle. Domingo has never been treated well in life and doesn't care that Atl is either uninterested in doing so, or incapable. Although many vampire books are interested in portraying vampires as seductive, these vampires are mostly only somewhat sympathetic.

Read this book if you like vampire world-building, Mexico City, or people without much capacity trying to be good to each other.

Certain Dark Things takes place in a near future Earth where, in 1976 vampires were discovered to be real and not just creatures of folklore. Atl, last living daughter of a matriarchal vampire family, flees to Mexico City ahead of her family's killers. There she finds an unlikely ally in a down-and-out street kid, Domingo, who fundamentally changes the way Atl feels about humans. Though she's loath to trust him, and she knows she can't reveal the full details of her own past to him without alienating him, she needs all the allies she can get. Mexico City might be a vampire-free zone, but her family's murderers are still closing in on her and she can really use all the allies she can find...

A far more morally ambiguous, human story than you'd expect out of a book that also summarizes nicely as "battle between vampire druglords in Mexico City". Moreno-Garcia introduces us to different folkloric traditions of vampires, as ten different known species exist which draw from traditions all over the globe. Extremely interested to see some more of them show up in the sequel!