Certain Dark Things

Product Information

Then again, the beginning of the book was almost only exposition, mostly Atl explaining the world of vampires to Domingo, and the plot itself is super thin as it is. For people who only know me for Mexican Gothic, I should warn you all my books tend to straddle different genres and have a very different feel for one another. A feud between her clan and the Godoy’s, a rival Vampire gang, ended in the death of Atl’s mother and sister and led to her running for her life.

When the police force refuses to give her the authority and resources she needs and one of the local crime syndicates offers to fill that void, Ana has to compromise her morals and make some tough decisions. I'm not usually a reader of glossaries, but for any vampire geeks out there, this glossary has lots of fascinating details about all the different vampire types and their habits. He saw the people with shiny cars zoom by and the people without any cash jump onto the back of the bus, hanging with their nails and their grit to the metallic shell of the moving vehicle. Atl and Domingo stand little chance at all of making it out alive before the city devours them all – but they are determined to try. It was easy because few of them paid attention to the teenager leaning against the wall, backpack dangling from his left shoulder.Bernardino was the best character, but his motivation was non-existent and his believability was nil. I got bored with the sameness of it after a while, but this book reminded me of what I love about the genre. With vampire fiction making a bit of a resurgance and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, justly, gaining in popularity, I believe it was a smart decision. Moreno-Garcia takes advantage of Mexico City’s status as a sprawling metropolis with centuries of history and a vibrant street culture.

Rodrigo, on the other hand, works tighly with Nick and is more familiar with the criminal underbelly of Mexico City. Lovers of Vampire lore will notice the little nod’s to tales of old, but she manages to make Certain Dark Things and the Vampires that inherit it completely her own. There were no vampires in Mexico City: their kind had been a no-no for the past thirty years, ever since the old Federal District became a city-state, walling itself from the rest of the country. He was looking at her discreetly, and he knew how to do discreet, so he was a bit surprised when she turned and stared right back at him. Her plan doesn’t include Domingo, but little by little, she finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm.

The only reason he’s arrived in Mexico City is to murder Atl, who turned down his advances shortly before he murdered her family.

Moreno-Garcia builds on vampire lore and expands it by creating lots of different species of vampires, each with different strengths and weaknesses. Oh what a cool book this could have been if the many cool ideas it contains had been spun a little further, if there had been a little more plot and substance, a little more depth to the characters.When he finally meets a real-life vampire, though, he learns they’re nothing like the depictions in pop culture. I’m not someone who’s ever needed much motivation to pick up a vampire story after all, and after learning that one of the main characters is a descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, I was even more intrigued. What I found super fascinating about this novel and why it jumped out from all the previous vampire novels I read was that it addresses neocolonialism and the drug trade and links the two. Picture this a runaway vampire with roots tracing as far back as the Aztec empire and a teenage trash collector are on the run in a futuristic Mexico City.

With its vibrant prose and stellar world building, Certain Dark Things is one of the best books I’ve read in years. I really enjoyed the overall idea and the setting; particularly, how humans and vampires live side-by-side. Mostly for how cut off that small, devastating story is from the larger world but also with how brutal and confronting it is about the dynamics a creature like a vampire would create between people.Her range in her writing never ceases to amaze me, same with her never wanting to limit herself to one genre. Which brings us to Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things, which may be one of the best books I’ve read with such a generic title.