Following their award-winning RUMORS OF THE UNDEAD, Steve Niles and Jeff Mariotte team up again to deliver 30 DAYS OF NIGHT: IMMORTAL REMAINS, the second in a series of original novels based upon Niles’ popular vampire comics franchise.
Here, the townspeople of Savannah, Ga., are terrified by a string of murders perpetrated by a serial killer known only as the Headsman, so named for the brutal decapitations he carries out on his numerous victims. News of these gruesome slayings reaches the ears of a guy named Dane, who thinks the work could be that of a vampire.
He should know. Dane’s one himself.
However, he’s also a “good” vampire: one who kills only when he has to, and even then, he’s careful to suck the lifeblood of only the guys who don’t deserve to live. Dane enjoys a peaceful, undetected co-existence with humankind, and the Headsman’s tour of death threatens to ruin that for all bloodsuckers, so Dane hops a flight to Georgia to see if his theory holds merit.
He’s not without comrades in the hunt and fight, enlisting the help of a curious, disgraced-cop-turned-cabbie whose former fellow officers just fell prey, and a woman who, despite just being raped by a vampire, finds herself pregnant from the harrowing experience.
Their search uncovers immediate answers, but ones which send him to Barrow, Ala., the sleepy little town where all of this – at least in terms of the original 30DON graphic novel – began.
RUMORS was so compelling because it was a procedural mystery that just happened to have some vampires in it. Here, the sides of that equation are flip-flopped. The whodunit aspect still is the more interesting even if it’s been lessened, pushed out in favor of the fangs. Therefore, the novel loses its uniqueness.
What REMAINS, though, is still a highly readable foray into horror – just different enough to avoid being another cookie-cutter vampire novel. It helps that Niles and Mariotte are strong writers of prose. Their easy-going narrative fits snugly within the 30DON mythos, but operates successfully as a standalone tale so as not to alienate the uninitiated. –Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• ALEISTER ARCANE by Steve Niles and Breehn Burns
• BIG BOOK OF HORROR by Steve Niles, Scott Morse, Ted McKeever and Richard Sala
• BIGFOOT by Steve Niles, Rob Zombie and Richard Corben
• THE CRYPTICS by Steve Niles and Benjamin Roman
• DAWN OF THE DEAD by Steve Niles and Chee
• DC UNIVERSE: TRAIL OF TIME by Jeff Mariotte
• FUSED by Steve Niles
• THE NAIL by Steve Niles and Rob Zombie
• REMAINS by Steve Niles and Kieron Dwyer
• SECRET SKULL by Steve Niles and Chuck BB
• STEVE NILES’ CELLAR OF NASTINESS by Steve Niles
• 28 DAYS LATER: THE AFTERMATH by Steve Niles
• 30 DAYS OF NIGHT: RUMORS OF THE UNDEAD by Steve Niles and Jeff Mariotte
• WAKE THE DEAD by Steve Niles and Chee
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Is this a graphic novel or a novel? Wasn’t quite clear from the review, but I thought the original was a graphic novel, no?
Gal
Admittedly, when you become a multimedia franchise, it gets confusing, but go back to the first paragraph: This is a novel, based on a series of graphic novels.
What is the name of the 1st and third books in this series thier are so many with 30 days of night it’s hard to find out.
Thanks so much.
The first novel is 30 DAYS OF NIGHT: RUMORS OF THE UNDEAD. As of now, the third will be ETERNAL UNREST, currently slated for July 2008. That may change.