Ho-hum, another masterpiece

So.

Yesterday, I finished my second dark fantasy book. I think I'll talk about the first, though, since the second is a fairly close sequel.

It's about a werewolf who rescues a girl from vampires, killing them in the process, which gets their boss mad at him. There's also a different girl, whose mother was a vampire's living minion; during an altercation with the mother's master, the same werewolf, as a child, seeing the vampire's-minion person rushing toward a child, assumed she was going for a hostage, and killed her...only to realize the woman was going for the child, to protect her from the werewolf, because it was her daughter. The now-adult daughter is killing werewolves (natch). Only, see, she'd previously met his human form, and fell in love with him; she was a creepy, isolated kid (her mom being a vampire's minion, and all), and he was the first not-a-vampire-or-minion-of-same person she'd ever met. So she wants to kill one form of a person she's in love with in another form. Fun, huh?

That's the premise. There's also a priest from a secret vampire-hunting order, and two hunters from a secular vampire hunting group—the former, who's kinda a smartass bastard, likes to mock the latter, since they use the nonsensical "science" vampire idea, like calling them mutants and thinking UV light that's not from sunlight will hurt them. Also the boogieman shows up, as do the vampires who inspired Carmilla and Dracula. There's a bunch of other vampires, too—Japanese jikininki (yes, they fit my definition of vampire—read on); Romanian strigoi, moroi, pricolici, and nesuferâti (Nosferatu); Aztec ciuateteoh (it's set in Tucson); Caribbean loogaroo. There's also multiple kinds of werewolf—all the types of Slavic vlkodlak (wilkolak, vurdilak); French loup-garou; Mexican lobisones; Scandinavian ulfhedhnar and berserkers (who are werebears); Irish and Italian werefoxes; and a Japanese yôko, who isn't exactly a werefox, 'cause he doesn't consider himself human.

It being me, there's a lot of philosophical expospeak—but done pretty well, I feel, since it's both relevant, and not something anyone around today is actually familiar with ("As you know," he didn't say because nobody does, "act is limited by potency"). There's also spell-casting in Latin, German, and Classical Nahuatl, as well as dialog in Czech, Spanish, Japanese, Romanian, and Austrian German (way over-Austrian, really, but it makes everything Carmilla says amusingly incomprehensible). There's also prayers in Latin (because the priests are hardcore, I swear, not just because it sounds much cooler) and mantras in Sanskrit (one of the vampires is still a Buddhist—go look up "Jizô Bosatsu"). The spells involve alchemy (which works a lot faster when a vampire's powering it, a la FMA except the effects are based on Hermetic symbolism rather than chemistry), onmyôdô, and a fictional form of voodoo.

Vampires are, as I previously said, basically what the Japanese call onryô. That is, they're dead people who've come back through resentments—specifically, in line with a lot of real vampire legends, they're mostly suicides (though one of the Japanese jikininki is one because they wouldn't let him commit harakiri). There's also references to Chesterton's Orthodoxy, since that's one of his main points. Fans of anime will find it grapples with existential themes not generally touched in Western work nowadays (fun fact: existentialism doesn't just mean finding a reason to keep going; it involves the question whether one should). This is where Scholasticism and the priests come in: as Maritain demonstrates pretty well in Existence and the Existent, Aquinas has the most coherent philosophy of existence ever formulated.

Werewolves, meanwhile, are an Indo-European warrior society (like berserkers, or the Fianna), that bound the power of the wolf to themselves using true names and sealed it with the moon. They gained the ability to use super-abilities similar to vampires, to change parts of their body, or to become normal wolves. They can also enter what they call the Ultimate or Wolf-God form, where they become "as much of the concept of a wolf, as can fit in the material world" (if it was the whole thing, there could only be one of it at a time, and it'd have infinite power; that's metaphysics, folks). They're mostly very secretive and a little scary, but they work with the vampire-hunting priests, thanks to a treaty from the 12th century. Those who know their Catholic history: three guesses who negotiated said treaty (bonus points if you say where).

Werewolves are vulnerable to silver (though some of them, called moonstruck, are only vulnerable to silver if it's combined with iron), though vampires can often harm them just by force of will, as can some humans. Vampires are basically invulnerable, though some of them can be burned, and some of them are harmed by sunlight (others lose most of their powers, others don't care). Other than that, it takes blessed or enchanted weapons to hurt them permanently, although again, force of will can do it. Hits that kill them before they can regenerate will also do it (obligatory Blade reference: "Aim for the head or the heart, anything else and it's your ass."), though the stronger the vampire, the more you gotta knock out (one of the main villains develops a speech impediment, briefly, when he gets the whole middle of his brain blown out—then he heals). Most vampire hunters use guns, and I make a point of saying everyone's preferred model (the priest uses a .44 mag S&W 629, the woman from the secular hunters uses a Glock 37 in .45 GAP 'cause she's got small hands, her partner uses an HK USP, the werewolf-hunter chick uses a Colt 1911). Yep, I like big bullets. The werewolf himself uses a sword...because he's albino and doesn't have the depth perception for a gun, at night (and can't afford a laser sight). Yes, that's right, folks, a realistically portrayed albino. It can be done, did you know?