I really wanted to like David Bishop’s FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT: TWILIGHT OF THE DEAD. Vampires behind enemy lines during World War II? Nazis fighting bloodsuckers? Hitler vs. the undead? Sign me up for that, baby!
But – and there’s always a but, isn’t there? – the potential outshone the reality and left me feeling a little cheated. Granted, this was the third book in a trilogy, and it’s based on a 2000 AD comic I’d never heard of, so I had a difficult time getting through this one.
Part of the problem is that at times, it felt more like I was reading a history book than a novel, and while I can appreciate the research that went into giving the story a solid grounding, it doesn’t make for an exciting reading experience. The basic premise is that Lord Constanta – the vampire … er, excuse me, “vampyr” big guy in charge – is readying his final attack on humanity with his vampyr army. German and Russian soldiers have to try to forget about the fact that they were previously shooting at each other and work together to stop him.
Yep. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.
Fans of the franchise (and the other two books in the series, OPERATION VAMPYR and THE BLOOD RED ARMY) might enjoy this one, but there just wasn’t enough character development to make me care about the protagonists or enough bloodshed to keep me interested in the story.
On the upside, though, I now know how to say “bitch,” “whore” and “asshole” in German and Russian, thanks to the handy-dandy glossary in the back of the novel, so points should be given for that. I don’t want to be too much of a zasranec. –Rebecca Brock
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- Richard Matheson’s The Twilight Zone Scripts: Volume Two
- Different Kinds of Dead and Other Tales
- Dead Wrong
- The Book of the Dead
- 24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate
