Customer Reviews

Vampire Apocalypse: Descent Into Chaos

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

'Descent into Chaos' is the second installment in the 'Vampire Apocalypse' series, which started with 'A World Torn Asunder'. While I already loved the first novel, this sequel contains even more complexity and depth.

In the first book the frontiers between friend and foe where clearly defined by the fight of humans against vampires. Now, however, new traitors and adverseries can be found within the own ranks of the human community. On the other side, the vampires have to face attacks by their own kind and even by their thralls, a situation which has never occured before. The previously inviolable power structure is threatened to be overthrown, creating new chances where hope for the continuation of mankind was almost lost.

The author tells the story from different points of view, so you get to know each parties' motives for their quarrels individually and on a personal level. The previously clear scheme of good humans vs. bad vampires/thralls is no longer fitting, as good and evil are now present on both sides.

Two years ago with earth's nonrenewable energy sources all but depleted and civilizations declining, the vampire horde surfaced and attacked humans. The vampires won the war. As the lower species on the food chain, humans have become cattle; a serum given by the vamps to their food supply turns them docile.

Still there remain resistance groups including one warrior unit that killed Nero, the leader of the Cabal vampire territory. Peter Harris accomplished the impossible deed and pushes to go on the offensive since vampires are territorial creatures hiding inside their respective Cabal and the Master Vampires distrust one another. The Von Kruger Cabal in Indiana has great power but a low human population while the Wentworth Cabalp has no power but a large army. Using guerilla techniques and warfare, Peter manipulates the pride of each Master so that the Cabals go to war with one another. However a new danger surfaces as it is learned that the serum proves fatal to humans, thralls and vampires. Peter is determined to rescue the human cattle while the Von Kruger-Wentworth vampire civil war continues unabated.

Part two of The Vampire Apocalypse (see A WORLD TORN ASUNDER) gives readers insight into the thralls, humans who periodically exchange fluids with their master vampire, which turns them into super soldiers. Many volunteered to survive, but like the purebred humans they have schemes inside of plots to obtain more power. Derek Gunn is a master vampire writer who provides his fans with a graphic frightening world that hooks the audience as few military horror sagas do.

Harriet Klausner

The world may be overrun by vampires, but the humans are starting to fight back. After winning a decisive victory against Nero's cabal in Vampire Apocalypse: A World Torn Asunder (Vampire Apocalypse Book 1), Harris and his band of rebels are forced to escalate their resistance to acquire enough resources to sustain an increasing number of civilian refugees. This means pitting the two neighboring vampire cabals against each other in open war - with the humans caught in the middle.

Author Derek Gunn lays out a very dark, very believable (OK, maybe not the whole vampire thing, but still) scenario in this series, and with this second volume the scope of the story is widened significantly. On the human side, we go from Harris and a few cohorts to a small town's worth of survivors and all the political maneuvering that brings. On the vampire side, we learn more about their hierarchies and factions, as well as some overarching rules the most powerful vampires maintain over their territories. As with the first book in the series, Gunn serves up a lot of action, and this time that includes some epic, bloody skirmishes between thralls and vampires as well as a railway scene that plays out like a blockbuster movie when you read it. The pace is fast, the stakes are high, and once you start you're going to want to barrel through to the very satisfying finish.

Some of the issues I had with the first book are present here as well. The characters - especially the newer ones - tend to be thrown in with an immediate back story, and never have time to really develop. Personally, I would have loved to have seen the book expanded significantly to explore life in the survivors' compound and a more gradual development of the political turmoil that dominated the first part of the story. It would have been a good way to really get to know the characters. The book could also benefit from one more pass-through by a copy editor to clean up a few minor errors.

It's not perfect, but Descent Into Chaos is an improvement over A World Torn Asunder, and a good addition to one of the better vampire-themed series out there. Fans of E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series and Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's Strain trilogy will definitely want to check out the Vampire Apocalypse.

Book 2 of 3 is another amazing ride in the new world. Nonstop terror and hate fills the pages of this book. I for one can't wait to grab book 3!!!

"Vampire Apocalypse: Descent into Chaos" is a bit of a Hope Spot (see TV tropes.org) that I really enjoyed, a bit like the Empire Strikes Back. Everything starts out pretty good for the heroes before things start really going to hell in a handbasket. The comparison to Gaunt's Ghosts still holds, since the books are fundmentally war novels and follow our heroes as they try and survive against overwhelmingly monstrous bad guys.

A big change is that a substantial portion of the action is actually from the point of view of the enemy. Instead of following the "Good vs. Evil" resistance, we instead get a lot of "Evil vs. Evil" fighting between the vampire lords Wentworth and Von Kruger. Wentworth is slightly more sympathetic than the "ax-crazy" Von Kruger but they're both complete monsters at the end of the day.

Despite this, the book is still quite exciting as we get a bit more insight in how the Thralls and Vampires rule the world. The answer is, not very well. The reader is given a bit of a gut punch when it'd described the entire population of Indiana and another state probably totals about 200,000 people. Given Indiana has, presently, a population of 6,000,000 it's a nightmare to contemplate just how the vampires have been running the world to the ground. If it wasn't clear before, the vampires are too stupid and greedy to honestly care about managing their food supply and humanity will be destroyed if we continue under their rule.

This bothered me to a certain extent. Under the Serum, it's questionable if humanity is even breeding. Though it's possible that the Thralls are leaving children on their victims, I don't even know how well the Serum humans are taking care of themselves. Some hints are addressed that the vampires only vaguely encourage their humans to farm or do other things to feed themselves. Really, in order to choose worse rulers for humanity you'd probably have to look at some of the most crazy dictators of Africa. While it's justified in that vampires seem to be almost supernaturally controlled by their thirst and are not the best thinkers, it goes against Derek Gunn's established statement that vampires made a very elaborate plan to take over the world.

It's a credit to Derek Gunn that I can still actually believe it, despite everything, due to how realized the vampires are as purely selfish engines of ID incarnate.

Back on the human side of things, the number of free humans has grown to about 3,000 survivors and our heroes are already finding themselves completely overwhelmed by bureaucracy. To an extent, I'm with Steele in that I have to wonder why it was worth rescuing these idiots if they're immediately going to turn around and bite the hand that fed them. Part of this is Harris' fault as he seems pathologically unwilling to step into a leadership role, the one thing these people need more than anything. Yet, you still want to just reach in and strangle them when they turn to the smug smooth talking lobbyist Regan (I suspect his name is a deliberate bit of political commentary given the first book seemed rather allegorical in its description of what destroyed human civilization).

While I can certainly sympathize with the human survivors wanting to guarantee their safety, the fact that they want to do so at the expense of the rest of the human race being enslaved in blood and rape camps (a sadly accurate depiction of what Derek Gunn nicely dances around in his description of what humans endure) forfeits much of my sympathy for them. Let the free humans be eaten, seriously. Anyone who votes for Regan (tee-hee, I can't help but laugh whenever I type things like that) is a man who hates freedom. Honestly, it reminds me a bit of Gaius Baltar's election from Battlestar Galactica, but there is less moral umbrage in electing Baltar. After all, it's not like the Cylons had a horde of unrescued human slaves behind them.

Unsurprisingly, in the face of democratic opposition, Harris continues to perservere on. It's another small criticism of mine that, just once, I'd like to see democracy not actually fail in the face of a crisis. To be fair, that's part of the point. The reason it fails is the voters refuse to take responsibility for their actions and the apathy of those who won't vote their conscience every election, but it was still very depressing. I'm still hoping it will prove to be a force for good in the next book. However, I'm going to enjoy Regan continuing to undermine Harris politically until then. There's a reason obstructive bureaucrats have always been good villains in everything from Ghostbusters to Transformers II, it's because they exist in real life.

I won't spoil the books climax but it is a very daring and epic battle which ends in a way that reminds me of old Pulp serials (or at least the remakes of them like Indiana Jones). Not all of the major heroes make it out alive from this particular story and their loss is something that is surprisingly poignant. It's sad but two of my favorite characters, even more than more "important" heroes, get the ax in this book. There's also a nice subplot where you're sure something abyssmal is going to happen to a young woman before Derek Gunn shows he's aware of the cliche of the Distressed Damsel.

The action is even more exciting this book and the plot more complex, I am now immediately going to order Vampire Apocalypse: Fallout over Kindle.

9/10