Dark Corners: As I Was saying...

As I was saying, Brandon Massey's Dark Corners imports wholesale aspects of Steven King's Salem Lot: a rural town with a tradition limited contact with the outside world, a dark evil related to the town's past, a young man whose move to the town stirs things up, the quick spread of the vampire disease.

Each of these elements is a horror cliche by now.

What works for Steven King that doesn't work quite so well for Massey; King has absolute contempt for the small mindedness of this town. The evil of vampirism reflects the evil within the town itself.

Brandon Massey likes his people and his town, for the most part. Vampirism here does not represent the evil of slavery which brought it on the town; vampirism represents the desire for revenge.

This is a great idea. I wish he'd have done more with it. Instead, the theme he siezes upon is the father / son dynamic. David Works it out with his father, Kyle fails to work it out with his father, and Kahlil very effectively works it out with his. There's something to it: the wanton siring of vampires by vampires is an image of fathers wantonly siring sons.

Too earnest.

Where I really fell off the boat, though, was with the handling of Nia James and the romantic subplot. In a subplot unrelated to the main plot, Nia is being pursued by an abusive man from her past, Colin Morgan. Nia, who can repeatedly shoot a friend turned vampire until he's incapacitated, lets Colin get away AFTER he has captured and abused her Grandmother.

Here I see an author manipulating his plot to make certain plot points. It just doesn't work.

What I would have liked: Diallo is compelling. I wish his son had been equally so. I wish we were made to feel that his thirst for revenge, and that he were almost right to have it.

He leaves himself room for a sequal, which I expect to see. I hope Lisha, Kyles mommy, shows up and turns out to be unextectedly complex and not at all squishy good, and that Kyle intends to do evil but gets sidetracked into being less than evil. After he eats David Hunter. That's what I hope.