Dead good
Synopsis
Freddie Burns just wants ten pints, football violence, and the chance to take over his uncle’s fading gangland empire.
But when a routine hit goes tits up, Freddie discovers a new kind of organised crime – one where vampires are real and monsters hide in plain sight. Good thing Freddie has a nasty talent for giving vampires a good kicking – them, and anyone else who looks at him funny.
Freddie’s power to rip magical strength from the death of living things drags him to a world he never knew existed. Now he’s staring down shadowy organisations, a magical underworld, gruesome vampire initiations and a blood-chilling covenant.
It might be up to Freddie to save the world – or at least not wreck it entirely. He just needs a drink and a smoke first.
Review
London-based paranormal urban fantasies are always fun. Whether it’s Ben Aaronovitch’s longstanding series Rivers of London or last year’s brilliant debut The Reaper by Jackson P. Brown, writers who know the capital and get the capital (something my Andy Burnham-chips-and-gravy Manchester self can’t claim) is always interesting in the spec fic world. Well with Blood Drunk, out September 24 from Tor, debut author Ben Shepherd is following in these fine footsteps, but he’s brought a new vibe to the table. Imagine a particularly violent Guy Ritchie crime caper. Now make it more gritty, scuzzy, realistic—picture Gary Oldman’s character from Slow Horses sleeping on a couch after inhaling a takeaway and a bottle of booze. Then add a heady dash of Kingsman—the commoner being trained in a posh secret society. Then chuck in a bunch of vampire clans and the complex rules governing their society, as well as some deliciously dark magic, and you might get something like Blood Drunk. This book was so riotously, addictively entertaining that I read it in two sittings, the first one only interrupted by the need to sleep.
The plot begins with Freddie Burns, a young and green gangster who wants to inherit his uncle’s South London mini empire. But when a hit goes wrong, Freddie is the only survivor, and discovers two things: vampires are real and very present in London, and he’s got a type of magic that’s particularly good for beating the undead shit out of them. Next thing he knows he’s enrolled in a secret society that teaches him how to use his magic to sustain a tenuous vampire pact in the city, even as something big is coming down the line that threatens everything.
The first thing to point out is just how relentlessly, albeit grimly, entertaining this is. The reveal of London’s secretive system of vampire clans, covenants and rules is fun, and the nature of Freddie’s magic is gloriously dark and leads to some truly revolting sequences. I’m not going to reveal what his magic is—my rule is that if the blurb doesn’t mention it and it surprised me, I shouldn’t mention it myself—but trust me, it’s darker than a black hole at midnight. And then there’s the secretive magic training school Freddie is sent to, often feeling like a literary pisstake of those that have come before—imagine if a young James Bond or Harry Potter didn’t give a shit and spent his weekends belting people on the football terraces—but is also gleefully sinister. Thereafter, things get complex but no less fun, throwing in secretive vampire plots and other strange creatures of the night (wait till you meet the brutally sinister Resurrection Man).
But this isn’t just a fun vampire crime caper. The heart of the book, for all its scenes of underground club fights with gnomes, is the character of Freddie, who refuses to get with the programme and continues to drink himself into oblivion while rejecting any real help, like Danny Dyer in a spy film. As entertaining as this is at first, it soon starts to become a source of violence in itself, as I genuinely cared for him—his first person voice is strangely charismatic as much as it is booze-soaked—and his subtle character development (or at least the reader’s wish for it) makes the second half of the book, after the initial wave of fun and violence has crashed down, more grimly real as all the threads come together. Underneath the riotous fun is a character study of someone hurting, and the question of whether they can do something about that that doesn’t involve twenty drinks and a bloody face.
Oh and it’s worth mentioning the lack of speech marks. Yep, that’s right. There are none. This isn’t revolutionary—famously the likes of Cormac McCarthy saw no need for them—and recently the likes of Sally Rooney have been ditching them, but to do it for a debut takes some balls, and requires crystal clear clarity in prose and dialogue. It might be disorienting for some, but it’s a great way to throw you into the head of its character, and you’ll soon forget why you ever needed them in the first place.
Overall, Blood Drunk is a gloriously addictive South London vampire crime urban fantasy: throw Guy Ritchie, Kingsman and the secretive-but-scuzzy vibe of Slow Horses in a blender then chuck in nasty, dark magic and a secret vampire society and you have one of the most intensely entertaining reads of the year; a book so well written, it doesn’t even need speech marks. Drink it up, it’s bloody brilliant.
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