Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an awesome work of horror, that takes familiar tropes and reimagines them. The concept is Certain Dark Things envisions a fascinating near future Mexico City with different types of vampire drug lords vying for territory. The story takes off when Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, comes into the orbit of Atl, the descendant of Aztex blood drinkers, who is a smart, beautiful, dangerous vampire. Atl needs to escape the rival narco-vampire clan, and Domingo needs to get off the streets. They both decide they'll head for South America. So, the two team up, with Domingo becoming Atl's renfield (vampire companion) and even lovers, in attempt to escape the vampires, humans, cops, and criminals that are after Atl. What occurs next throughout the novel is a pulse-pounding chase through a neon-drenched, Blade Runner-esque Mexican City, that will keep you turning the pages.

Certain Dark Things is a wonderful, bloody, gritty vampire noir that reimagines vampire lore. I happy the Tor Nightfire decided to reprint this book. It's original, complex, and entertaining. You'll quickly become fascinated by the vampire lore that not only draws on European culture but Mexican culture as well. The characters are complex (for instance, Atl isn't particularly a good person - I mean she is a vampire after all - and Domingo still chooses to be her renfield), the setting is unique, and the dialogue in this novel packs a wallop (you can clearly see the influence of film noir in the dialogue).

I really liked Mexican Gothic, thought The Daughter of Doctor Moreau wasn't bad (was actually pretty good!), but this novel is just one of the best books I've read in a long time. ( )

I guess you might call this one something of a slow burn. I almost stopped reading it because I found it a little boring, the characters a little hard to care about. The writing is strong, though, and I found her take on vampires interesting, so I kept with it and was ultimately glad I did. ( )

This is an interesting one.
It is a vampire story, but it feels original and unique among the thousands of generic urban fantasy stories.
In some regards, the vampires are very different than the common clichées, but that is not what makes this feel so different.

This book expertly handles POV in a very satisfying way. I never felt overwhelmed by how many characters I was supposed to learn about and empathize with. The POV is used to switch to the most interesting events and not away from them. I wasn't annoyed by a change of viewpoint even a single time which is usually my biggest gripe with multiple POVs.

The world feels much larger than the stage on which the story happens. The book manages to give the impression of a complex living world in which things keep happening without the characters being present.
And the world feels gritty. It manages to convey a visceral atmosphere where bad things can and will happen.
Many of the characters feel multi-layered with internal conflicts that don't fit neatly on a good and evil scale.

So why only 3 stars then?

Let's get to the biggest weakness of this book. Physical interactions between characters.
A lot of them just don't make sense. Especially in the latter half of the book, it becomes increasingly obvious how strange and disjointed many interactions are.
Let me give you an example from the end of the book. One character holds onto the arm of another tightly and claims that to make him release his grip the other person will have to break his arm.
She pushes him, and he falls and sprawls on the floor while she is unaffected. Like, why the whole shebang about him not letting go? Didn't he have a tight grip on her? This one example might seem rather petty but these kinds of contradictions happen all the time when characters interact. It seems the author is not able to actually visualize the scenes she is writing and play through them in her head. This is especially noticeable in fighting scenes. Most of them are honestly terrible at least from a choreographic standpoint. Interactions between characters that are currently trying to kill each other are strangely choppy and really make no sense whatsoever. This goes along with the classic character being completely exhausted and severely injured, about to die, and then pulling yet another burst of energy out of their ass to execute some incredibly far-fetched move befitting a martial arts movie. But worse than that, after these sequences, the character, that was about to die from blood loss for example is suddenly fine again, ready for another round. This is especially strange because the rest of the writing stays very high quality which I found incredibly jarring. I almost wish the fights were just all-around terrible so I could just skim over them and enjoy the rest of the story.
But as I previously wrote, this inability of writing sensible physical interactions between characters is present everywhere in the story, not only the fights.

My second big gripe with this book is how it starts out with this dark nuanced take on vampires that have done terrible things as that is in their nature and whatnot. It almost reminded me a bit of the feeling I got reading "Interview with the Vampire", how the book told a terrible story about all-around horrible characters that nonetheless manage to capture you emotionally in some strange way.
It also makes the story feel darker and grittier and gives the characters apparent depth.
But there are two problems with this. First, these characters are not centuries-old creatures that have lived through many lifetimes. They are in their early twenties.
The second problem is the emotional landscape of the protagonists, the vampire in particular.
The characters paradoxically degenerate from cynical, world-weary survivors that have seen too much of the world's cruelties far too early in life into innocent, idealistic, gullible, wide-eyed adolescents, and in the process, they also become dumber instead of smarter.

The book started out as a gritty story about survival and politics and war among vampires which then devolves into this cheesy teenage romance of a beggar boy and a vampire princess or something like that.
What is even stranger is that the book doesn't really lose its dark and gritty environment. People are just killed without much fanfare sometimes. Deaths without long death scenes feel infinitely more impactful than these drawn-out affairs of exchanging last words and expressions of grief and desperation, to me at least.
And the author demonstrates that she hasn't forgotten this either.

I guess you could say this is a book of contradictions. Full of genius writing mixed with utter terribleness. ( )

This is really just existing on vibes, and that's ok. The unique vampire lore and setting were the high points, the characters were not quite up to par with what I'm used to from SMG. Best vampire book I've read tho, even if that number is small. ( )

Certain Dark Things is the third book I’ve read by Silva Moreno-Garcia. As with Mexican Gothic (read in February) and Velvet Was the Night (read in August) this book starts simple and builds the pace right up to the end. The best way I can describe the feeling is a locomotive working its way to top speed. The author uses shifting POVs to reveal the action and particular plot points.

Vampires are no longer a secret in this world and everyone deals with that reality differently. Some countries expel the vampires, the UK forms a special police unit to deal with them (the Van Helsings!), while Mexico tolerates them to a point. Mexico City is a no-vamp zone but is infested with gangs that seem even worse. Domingo (our main human hero) puts it best: “Maybe vampires were bad, but other things were just as bad.”

The mythology and world-building in this novel is spectacular. It’s bolstered by an “Encyclopedia Vampirica” at the end, detailing the 10 different flavors of vampires and giving a nice overview of the world.

Domingo meets Atl, a vampire princess on the run from other factions. Her story is interwoven with Aztec mythology and shows the ritual of taking on a Renfield (or Blood Lackey if you prefer). The book could easily be renamed “We Are Our Hunger” repeated a few times in the story. Ironically, this could have been applied to the humans more aptly than the vampires.

As with the other two books I’ve read, the ending begs for a sequel. It does not disappoint on action or details. All the characters are crisp and engaging. There were a few times where the scenes brought stark visuals images to mind like paintings on the page.

Read this if you like Vampire stories and well-drawn mythologies. Skip it if your idea of a good Vampire novel rhymes with the word “skylight.”
( )