Continuing
on my most recent Eco Terror kick I thought I’d check out this nature run amok
book about Vampire Bats terrorizing the American Southwest. This was part of
the Jaws “inspired” series of books and movies that came out in the mid to late
seventies to cash in on the interest in stories taking real life creatures and turning
them into monsters. Hey this was a New York Times bestseller so it was worth a
look.
Our main
character is a tribal policeman named Youngman who lives on the Hopi
reservation in New Mexico. He is friends with an exiled medicine man named
Abner who at the start of the book is talking to him about the end of the
world. Between the actions of another tribe and those of the white businessmen
greed has begun to destroy the reservation and the Hopi people. Abner casts a
spell invoking the wrath of their God. The tool of this wrath is a swarm of
Vampire Bats that not only kill people by feeding on them but infect the
survivors with the Bubonic Plague. Double whammy right there.
The rest
of the story is Youngman trying to dodge the corrupt Indians looking to lock
him up and silence him. The news of the plague breaking out could ruin a big
business deal with the whites for the oil reserves found on Hopi land. All this
happens while he also has to deal with stopping the bats that are killing
everything, including people, that they find in their path. Along the way he
saves his love interest and meets up with a scientist that has a history with
the bats separate from the main story of the book.
I’m torn on
Nightwing. There are some decent bits of creature mayhem with the bats
attacking people and swarming over them. That was what I would expect from a
book like this and found that satisfying. We also get the corrupt businessmen
that are trying to cover everything up to make a few bucks, even if that means
sacrificing folks along the way. Again, this is a perfect fit for this story.
On those points Smith does a great job. Where he loses me is when he tries to
get creative.
There is
an odd shift in the book between the scientific and supernatural. For part of
the book the bats are just animals that have the plague and have come to the
reservation because the scientists, Paine, has been poisoning their roosts in
Mexico to get some revenge for the death of his father. Totally explainable and
based in reality. Cool that works and makes sense. But then towards the end of
the book we get Youngman taking some Datura root (a drug that induces
hallucinations) and seeing the ghost of Abner who is using the bats to destroy
the world. Suddenly there are ghosts of long dead Indians and magic circles.
What happened to the science?
I guess
that it could be that none of the magical stuff really happened, but the book
leaves that vague. Even if it was a hallucination the fact that the tone
changes so dramatically sort of bugged me. It felt like I was reading two different
books and that made the narrative seem disjointed. I don’t care if it is
science or magic but pick one and stick with it.
There were
also several points in the book when new characters appear but aren’t
introduced properly. I had to backtrack a couple of pages to understand who was
who and how they fit into the story. There are transitions that aren’t clear
between scenes that had me again backtracking to sort it out. For example,
there is a dream sequence that pops out of nowhere that is also set in the
past. This doesn’t happen at a chapter break either, it just happens from one
paragraph to another. Hell, it wasn’t even the same character we were following
in the previously. I hate it when a book
doesn’t flow properly and takes me out of the story. It seemed as if that
happened every time I was getting into the groove.
Killer
Vampire Bats… I so wanted to love this book. Sadly, there are just too many
issues with characters and story for me to recommend it. There are so many
better written books like this that I would recommend spending your time on.
I’d pass on this one.
© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer
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