The Eye of the Moon – review

Author: Anonymous

First Published: 2008(UK)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: “Dear Reader, in your hands you hold The Eye of the Moon. Enjoy it while it lasts…

“After eighteen years of slaughter (and a helluva lot of bourbon), it’s time for the Bourbon Kid to quit killing. But, bearing the mysterious Eye of the Moon, Peto the Hubal monk returns to Santa Mondega in search of the hooded slayer, and he is not alone.

“As Halloween approaches, unlikely heroes Dante and Kacy are once more sucked into the violent vortex of evil – along with gangs of vampires (and the odd werewolf). Throw in Sanchez the interfering bartender, the Secret Service, Jessica the angel of death and a new Dark Lord, and pretty soon there is another bloodbath looming.

“So when a hit on the kid goes wrong, those wanting him dead find that the tables have turned: he’s got a hit list of his own. And this time he’s sparing no-one…

“This bloody but brilliant sequel to the Book with No Name continues the story in a black-humoured, bone-chilling tale of massacre, mayhem and madmen.”

The Review: As the blurb mentions this is the sequel to The Book with No Name and things have improved and not just because the vampires feature in this right from the beginning of the tale. As much fun as the first book was, in a glorious tall tale telling tradition, it lacked a focus as such and a hook character.

Whilst Dante was a character in book one he now steps forward as a flawed but hook-worthy character as does the Bourbon Kid himself. Indeed one of the ways this has definitely improved is in focus and structure. The first book seemed to lurch through a tale whilst this has definitively a tale to tell and, in doing so, it offers characterisation and more defined lore and background – not least because we discover why the Bourbon Kid is as he is.

I still cannot tell you exactly what the author does with cross lore – though it is still brilliant – but can tell you that beheading and destruction of the heart seems to be the general way of dealing with vampires. Following true death, well, as the book explains in a footnote, it “is a curiosity of vampire physiology that the corpses do not always decompose in the same way. After the slaughter in the Nightjar, some remains smoked and flamed briefly before being reduced to ashes; others deliquesced stinking horribly, melted and seeped through the floorboards; still others simply lay where they had fallen, awaiting the course of natural decomposition.”

The violence is still ultra-violent in nature – this is the only place that I can think of where a vampire is despatched via shotgun, where the barrel is shoved into the vampire’s anus first! The language is foul and it is all good fun. With addition of concepts such as the Holy Grail, an Egyptian mummy on the prowl and something akin to the Death Note, it is mayhem all the way. 7 out of 10.

There is a homepage here.