Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Publisher – Jo Fletcher Books

Published – Out Now

Price – £16.99 hardback £6.99 Kindle eBook

Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood-drinkers, is smart and beautiful - and very dangerous. Domingo is mesmerised.

Atl needs to escape the city quickly, to get far away from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn't include Domingo, but little by little, she finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of corpses stretches behind her, local cops and crime bosses both start closing in.

Vampires, humans, cops, and criminals collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Atl and Domingo stand little chance at all of making it out alive before the city devours them all - but they are determined to try . . .

The Vampire is one of our classic monsters and though periodically they can fall out of fashion they always come in. Why are we obsessed with what is ultimately a killing machine that sees us as food? Is it the same fascination as a shark? That they offer immortality and a chance to let our darker impulses out? In Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s haunting and amazing Certain Dark Things we glimpse an alternate world where vampires are real and crossing their paths will change your life forever.

In Mexico City they have made it a vampire free zone, not like other parts of the country or even the rest of the world. It is still a dangerous place as the united crime gangs want their own way of life to flourish but they’ve made it clear the bloodsuckers are not welcome. For Atl a young vampire of a famous Mexican Vampire family though it’s a necessary refuge after a gang war left her pretty much alone in the world and being pursued by another vampire crime boss who wants to see her suffer. Used to having everything she wants she is now scrounging for survival. She then crosses paths with Domingo a young garbage collector who gets to cross her path one night. Initially focused on allowing Atl to feed the two form a partnership that then tries to help aid Atl’s next escape to safety. Unfortunately, the vicious Nick who is the young son of the rival crime-lord and Ana a police officer with a track record of killing trespassing vampires are also now on Atl’s trail. A bloody final confrontation beckon.

I loved reading this! It’s sleek focused read that pulls you along the dark warm nights of Mexico City and into a number of dangerous encounters. In terms of worldbuilding it’s a near future eversion of our own world that has known vampires are real for fifty years (and we are told there are ten species to be afraid of). We aren’t infodumped just told everything n we need to know to make this ale work but a tale where we know they exist, what eventually kills them and how humans interact with them is delivered very factually from little things like the use of thermal scanners t also being aware that many in Mexico have run drug gangs for years.

To bring this to life we have the central pairing of Atl and Domingo. Atl is startling as we first meet her walking through the night in leather jacket and with her large Doberman that we understand why Domingo wanted to get talking. She is the dark glamour of the vampire – smart, funny, beautiful and we sense damaged. The former party girl scion of a crime family struggling to really get to grips how she has lost it all and is now reliant on a garbage man to save her. Domingo is an uneducated working-class man who is just making his way through life one day at a time. Vampires to him have just been something he would see in films and comics but to suddenly cross Atl he finds glamour and attraction. Being fed on by a vampire is initially just a chance to make some money very fast but he starts to bond with Atl. Now before you start thinking of this is paranormal romance bear in mind this is a much more complicated relationship – Atl is focused on getting some blood and initially she is resisting devouring Domingo simply because of the attention dead bodies will bring. Domingo’s feelings for Atl are this time more a cause of concern as we feel he may be getting used even though we start to see Atl begin to appreciate his loyalty and compassion we don’t think this will have a sappy sparkly ending for them.

Acting as a dark reflection of these two we have primarily Nick and his older human guardian Rodrigo. Nick too is a party animal but more likely to eat his guests. He belongs to a more vicious vampire species, and he wants revenge. Powerful but spoilt he starts leaving a trail of blood getting ever more attention as he hunts while Rodrigo a man who has served Nick’s family for years is very much in this for the money and loyalty and has learned to look the other way as the bodies pile up and occasionally even supplies the victims for feeding time. What makes this interesting then is the reader asking if Domingo is actually just heading for a similar relationship. What is eventually nicknamed in the book as becoming a ‘Renfield’ as a human companion/pet/servant? Will this nice but naïve young man start doing ever more darker deeds for Atl?

One interesting strand in the book is that both Nick and Atl’s families are running criminal organisations for drugs. While Atl’s family is native to Mexico and have a long history they aren’t kind and not afraid of violence themselves while Nick’s family are mor recent arrivals. You could see both families just representing Mexico’s long-standing crime-lords that are incredibly attractive to people offering glamour, wealth, and some power and at the same time death and destruction very much arrive at the same time. Atl having seen the worst the gangs can offer and with Domingo’s compassion may possibly have some hope for redemption, but she is hiding quite a few secrets herself,

The plot is not necessarily a horror story although there are many scenes of blood, death, and violence it is in many ways similar to noir thriller as we trace Atl’s race for survival. Woven into the tale are two characters who help complete the story. Ana is a cop who wants to do the right thing and has moved to a vampire free city for a quiet life for her daughter and herself, but Atl’s arrival allows her to make some huge money for a human crime gang if she can locate them and her own fall into the darker side of this city definitely rings the noir bells. But on the other side of the spectrum is Bernardino a reclusive and ancient vampire who Atl seeks for aid. In many ways this old man in an empty mansion offers the classic vampire stereotype but he is both fascinating as being of the one species that all the other vampires fear and his more neutral perspectives offered on humans and the other vampires making him hard to take your eyes away from to watch what he is up to and how he really feels about things. When all these characters cross paths the action heats up and the reader feels a big confrontation grows ever nearer with outcomes for who survives murky.

As with all of my other experiences reading books by Moreno-Garcia this just wowed me and I’m glad this early book of theirs has finally been re-issued. It crosses an interesting line of dark fantasy, horror and even a noir thriller and yet offers something that feels uniquely its own thing while paying homages to the genres it clearly loves. Buy it, curl up with it and prepare for a dark escape across a busy city – excellent and highly recommended.