Which brings me to a little book I downloaded for my Kindle
- “Day Soldiers” by Brandon Hale. As I stated in my review of “Technomancer
(Unspeakable Things: Book One)”, I was looking for some cheap eBooks to have on
hand, and stumbled across a number of free and/or extremely cheap genre
options. One of which was “Day Soldiers”. The synopsis sounded kind of cool and
since it was 100% free I wasn’t about to be overly picky.
The story takes place in a world where humanity is at war
with the combined forces of vampires and werewolves. Young Lily Baxter decides
to stop living in fear of the creatures that live in the woods outside her
small town, and with her friend Leo takes them out with extreme prejudice.
Unfortunately this act rains destruction down upon the town and results in her
and Leo being the only survivors. Afterwards they are inducted into the Day
Soldiers, the human army holding the supernatural forces at bay. Trained to be
an assassin, Lily vows to personally kill the werewolf that changed her life
forever.
No, there is no hokey love triangle story at play here. Yes,
the vampires suck blood, are allergic to sunlight and holy relics. Yes the
werewolves work in packs and turn into gigantic fur covered bipeds that will
rip you apart for giving them a side glance. This is what vampires and
werewolves were meant to be – fucking scary. I suspect this series is a
reaction to Twilight and its unholy
sins against the genre. While reading this it felt like Brandon Hale was
spitting on that series and having a good time doing it as he set things right.
I’m talking thick, satisfying lung butter.
While Hale isn’t the best author around he certainly makes
“Day Soldiers” a very involving read. He keeps things simple and never goes
overboard with descriptions, characters or environments. Even some of the
action bits are very minimalist. What he does that made me enjoy this novel so
much was his creative take on the lore of vampires and werewolves.
For example – crosses, a common weapon used against
vampires, aren’t effective due to their religious significance. They act as a
focal point for the user’s willpower. The more you believe that it will work
against a vampire the more it will harm them. It’s even explained that any
object can be used in this way, like a rock or a book. The fact that Bram
Stoker’s “Dracula”, and countless other vampire books/movies, have always
touted crosses and their effects they tend to work better than other items due
how it’s infiltrated pop culture.
The same goes for the vampires. When a new vampire is made
they believe, due to what they’ve heard in every vampire related piece of media
pre-transformation, that they cannot enter a person’s house without being
invited first. It’s referred to as a “psychosis” belonging to young vampires,
and over time they will realize that these rules are actually bullshit and will
be able to overcome their fear. It’s all extremely fun and interesting.
The main characters, a group of young Day Soldier recruits,
are drawn in very broad strokes and aren’t given much nuance or real depth. I’m
not complaining because the book is written in a very pulpy style that just
gets to the point and keeps the plot moving along at a very brisk pace. That’s
not to say that they characters aren’t likable. Quite the contrary. I liked
every single one of them, villains included, mainly because everyone’s actions
speak louder than words in this world.
The story does get a mite predictable and some of the plot
threads are prematurely brought to a conclusion. Hale has written three books
in this series and I was expecting a good amount of carryover into the other
installments, but that appears to not be the case. Regardless, I am looking
forward to the continuing adventures of Lily and her squad to see where they
end up going from here.
Hale does have a tendency to repeat the same dialogue over
and over and over again. I don’t have enough fingers to count the amount of
times someone said “fair enough”. Plus, his characters don’t speak like real
people; a common occurance I’m finding in a lot of these eBooks I’ve read
recently. Another issue is the amount of stupid cheese going on in the finale
and the blasé reactions people have to some of the goofy revelations. I hope
this improves in the sequels.
“Day Soldiers” is a nice romp into a tired genre brought to
the brink thanks to one Stephanie Meyer. Thankfully this should wipe the tears
of shame away from horror fans cheeks with little effort. I highly recommend
this book to anyone looking to welcome these two staples of horror back
into the fold of pure awesomeness.
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