Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

read by Dan Bittner

Sort of a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood, set in Mexico City, with mismatched teen protagonists (one mortal and one vampire) thrown together in an improbable buddy story where the buddies’ lives are in constant peril, this book should have been tremendous fun. And it really was pretty good… but that was it.

I think the main problem was that I listened to the audiobook instead of reading the print version. Dan Bittner has a fine reading voice and all that, but he doesn’t know how to pronounce Spanish. Which, since the characters are all meant to be Spanish-speakers living in a Spanish-speaking country, is very distracting. There is no need for the narrator to fall into the trope of speaking English with a Spanish accent as a way of letting the listener know that the characters are actually meant to be speaking Spanish, but he ought to at least be able to pronounce proper nouns properly.

Aside from that… the protagonist is clearly meant to be sympathetic, and he is, more or less. But he’s a callow youth, scrappy and perfectly gallant, but not very interesting. The fledgling vampire he’s thrown together with is a much more interesting character, but we don’t get much time with her point of view. Oh, and there’s a lady cop who is stuck doing shady stuff because she’s a single mom and needs the money. A stock character and definitely uninteresting.

What’s interesting about this book is the world it’s set in. There are numerous species of vampire, which all have different appearances, abilities, and vulnerabilities—which explains why, although vampire legends exist throughout the world, they vary tremendously in their details. Each government has responded differently to the existence of these beings, which makes sense too. This is, potentially, a very rich setting for further stories, as this writer’s skill develops.

I’m treating this as the book version of the first X-Men movie—not that great on its own, but setting the stage for future good stuff. And who knows, maybe someone will take this raw material and make a great TV series or movie based on it.