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Blood Set

by Patrick Fontes

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Joe said: " Blood Set by Patrick Fontes (available digitally on Amazon)

"La familia es toda" — Hector Salamanca.

The Lost Boy vampires that terrorized a California beach town don't have a patch on the Cholo vampires that eat their way through Fresno in Patrick Fo Blood Set by Patrick Fontes (available digitally on Amazon)

"La familia es toda" — Hector Salamanca.

The Lost Boy vampires that terrorized a California beach town don't have a patch on the Cholo vampires that eat their way through Fresno in Patrick Fontes' gothic horror novel "Blood Set." High end splatter set in Central California farm country. Sex, style, gore and tribal identity combine to create an endearingly terrifying world infused with Mexican American culture and warring mythologies in an all too real city scape of addiction and decay, where the only thing that keeps things together is a sense of family, no matter how nightmarish. A blood feast worthy of Lorca, embellished by polished Doc Marten boots, black lipstick and pressed Pendletons

Focused on a clan of Mexican blood drinkers who occupy a Nineteenth Century ranch house that has caverns that go all the way to literal hell, the De Alba's may be evil, but they have each other, and they have style. Made up of a diverse group that reflect the diversity of Mexico the De Alba's consist of Sombra, an elegant and beautiful black lady vampire who still is traumatized by her experiences as a slave in the antebellum south, Blanco, a SAN PATRICIO turned in the Nineteenth Century who survived the Irish famine, the Twins, beautiful, eternally 21 Spanish aristocrats who seduce and then feed on their mortal lovers but love animals and babies, Princesa who once fed on lone travelers in her native Jalisco and now runs a rival gang of mini bike riding and Ben Davis wearing blood suckers who prey on homeless addicts, and Oxoma, the priestess matriarch who claims to have been made by Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent himself.

There are reasons to write a vampire story and more reasons why the genre, like the Western or dystopian science fiction, keep on attracting generation after generation of readers. Part of it is the perverse and taboo mingling of sex and death, of the carnal and the macabre, that is its own seduction. Another reason is what the appearance of a vampire says about the times and society the vampire appears in. Then, of course, the creepy entities, so human and so not human, offer a writer of fiction the ability to explore history from an imagined subjectivity. Patrick, who is a professor of history, draws on a lot of deep cuts, both in terms of the soundtrack (Chevala Vargas' haunting "La Llorona," "Angel Baby" by Rosie and the Originals, the Misfits), Mexican cooking, and, without saying, the tricked out low riders of this group of undead "To the immediate right... was Pedro;s 1979 Monte Carlo, 'Cool Here.' Painted aqua marine as a base, Mesoamerican geometric designs adorned all sides of the car... the front grill, back bumper, door handles and side mirror covers were etched by an artist in East Los Angeles... Pedro's hydraulic system was one of the best in the world."

Backgrounding the story is the very undocumented world of Fresno, the San Joaquin Valley and Central Sierra Nevada. In his first novel Patrick did for Fresno what Hubert Selby did for Brooklyn. In this novel (the first of two) Patrick does for Fresno what Joyce did for Dublin (before he got weird), indicating a provincial small city as a nexus of global mythologies with flashbacks to Virginia, pre-conquest Mexico, Renaissance Spain, New York, China, all seen through a vampiric lens.

The central conflict of the story involves the traditional vampires beef with an exile who ended up being strung out on meth due to preying on addicts (forbidden to legit vampires). What's worse than vampires? Vampires on meth. And clans of skinhead werewolves who live in the hillbilly towns of the Sierras, their arch enemies.

Patrick has an ongoing theme, the alienation of modern life, of people isolated and addicted/enslaved to work, or addiction, losing authentic connection to others. The vampires, with their long perspective, appreciate this because, while they are evil, they are still family. In the Cholo culture, as with punk rock, style is more than just fashion or self absorption, it's a way of marking your tribe, your relation to families and friends. Your tastes aren't just whims, culture isn't just inherited, it's created and shared, clothing, food, language, are expressions of your being, of apartness from the faceless majority with people who more or less "get you," with a visceral awareness of where community starts, with blood, with affinity, with a shared attitude toward life. With a tribe. The DeAlba's are a multi-racial tribe all of whom have connections with Mexico, suggesting possibilities of identity and found family not everyone thinks about. The proper application of a shared style, of selves over self, can cut through the horrors of existence like a purring air brushed vintage Chevy out for blood. Which is not an endorsement for vampirism...

Of course the book leaves you wanting more. Just like a good Mole. ...more "

Apr 15, 2024 09:46AM · see review