Title: The Nymphos of Rocky Flats Author: Mario Acevedo Year: 2006 Publisher: Eos Reviewer: Alan Smithee (pseudonym to protect the guilty) When first I saw it, I knew it was gonna be bad. With a title like "The Nymphos of Rocky Flats," how could it not be? Then I started reading the back cover. Oh dear Lord... somebody needs to be smacked for this one. But it's rather difficult to go smack a publishing company. First, large buildings don't respond well to pain. And second, well, I'm lazy. So I take the next best option. I shall destroy my brain in the name of SCIENCE! by reviewing the book and providing an appropriate response. Will it get publishers to stop publishing fucking vampire pr0n? No, but it will make one bitter soul---me---feel slightly less bitter about life. Now, they always say when you are providing critical feedback that you should lessen the blow by always starting with something positive to say. Hmmm... lemme think. Uhm, okay. I got it. The cover art is sort of cool. Now, for a criticism: YOU FAIL. Quote: "The agony squeezed my heart, compressing so hard I thought it would burst." I know how you feel, buddy, I just read your book (insert punchline drum sound-effect here). Only replace agony with mild aggravating boredom and general feelings of WTF?-ness. So it opens with an action scene? Good, good, except Acevedo forgot the action, and also forgot the fact that soldiers usually do, in fact, swear. Insert 3kg of standard Bu$hrant (tm) per unit volume for maximum effectiveness. It's not even a particularly creative rant... Wait, there is supposed to be a plot summary in here somewhere, isn't there. Here you go. Vampire Felix Gomez is an army guy. To use 'soldier' would be a bit generous. Fifteen minutes on the Internet to do some basic fact checking was probably too difficult for the author. He's fighting in Iraq and Bad Stuff happens and he gets turned into a vampire so he can atone for his sins of killing by killing more people... or something. The logic here is a bit muzzy. Vampire Gomez is a vampire. We get it. Why does he need to remind us at every turn that he is in fact a vampire? I think the fact that he's red-eyed, pale as hell, fanged, sleeps in a coffin, can't stand sunlight, and dips his pizza in blood would be enough. I started counting how often the author used the words "My vampire sense," but stopped at ~100. I'll leave it up to you, the loyal reader, to finish my work. Now cut to present day. Freshly discharged from the army and working as a private detective, Vampire Gomez been summoned by an old friend to investigate an "outbreak of nymphomania" (God, I wish I were making this up) at some nuclear power government James Bond something-or-other facility. Vampire Gomez is also affiliated with the Araneum, which appears to be vampire for "generic do-nothing secret society." He spends a great deal of time moralizing about current events and his condition and generally being the whiniest damn vampire ever. (And that, people, takes SKILL.) Even the other vampires are annoyed with him. I wonder if he would feel better if someone told him that blood-bank blood is fair-trade and ethically sourced. On the plus side, he's an expert on the right combination of cosmetic foundations needed to achieve a normal human complexion. There. That's two positive things. See? I'm balanced. Also, there's teh s3x. Now, my dear reader, you have probably noticed my well-placed use of 13375p33|< interspersed with otherwise normal prose. Why, do you ask? Simple, really. The plot reads like some basement-dwelling, hentai-loving person's Hellsing-detective story crossover fanfic. And that's probably an insult to Hellsing. At least Hellsing was sort of funny in between all the "OH GOD MY EYES" and "OH FUCK, NAZIS" moments. Now, when dealing with a book with a title like "The Nymphos of Rocky Flats" there's an expectation that there will be s3x, and of course there is. At one point, Vampire Gomez is held at gunpoint by a large-chested blond woman and ordered to remove his pants. Then later, it happens again, only with a brunette. Thankfully, Acevedo can't write descriptive sentences worth a damn or else my head might have exploded right then and there and ruined my couch, which is the only decent piece of furniture I own. The writing is dry to the point of peeling. For softcore pr0n, it's pretty damn boring, actually. I guess I was expecting a dime-store bodice-ripper sort of thing, which would be merely bad in the traditional sense, but I ended up with the prose version of stale pop-tarts dripping in KY and blood, instead. And they're the gross unfrosted cherry pop-tarts to boot. Interestingly, for every hackneyed pr0n-intro consisting of beautiful, buxom "______'s" inviting him in and throwing themselves at him, Vampire Gomez actually spends a fair amount of time fighting them off. Acevedo needs to learn that's not how its supposed to work. Dude, you're doing it wrong. And did I mention that there are fairies too? And Area 51? And vampire karaoke? Oh yes, yes there is. It's a veritable clusterfuck of weird... And not the good kind of weird. This book is its own special breed of bad, it's own evolutionary dead-end shit out by Darwin's own finches onto the rotting branch of vampire fiction. Hopefully the tree-pruning service will come by someday and saw it off, and if I'm real lucky all that falling wood will take out "Time of the Fox" along the way, but I'm not going to bet on it. I don't give a damn about the cardboard-cutout characters, the dialogue is wooden as a Louisville Slugger Fungo, and the vampire robot ninja pirates on page 106 were just plain stupid. Okay, I made that last part up, but the rest still stands. Another positive: It's mercifully short. In conclusion: YOU FAIL. I demand that restitution be made for my pain and suffering, preferably in the form of butter cookies. Have a nice day, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. I have to go read some Pratchett now to clear the mess out of my brain. I vote 1.3 IV bags out of a possible five. Make of that what you will.