Horror Book # 14 - They Thirst by Robert R McCammon

First off it I'll just say it took me quite a while to get through this book... first because I moved and had to spend all of my free time doing stuff around the house and then because I became addicted to NCAA Football for XBOX and couldn't stop playing it. Originally I thought I'd finish the book before Halloween... and now here it is a week into 2014 and I finally got through to the end. Now it may seem that this would indicate that I didn't enjoy the book, but really it is just the opposite. If I'm not enjoying a book I usually force myself to get though it as fast as I can (like when I read the final Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book in two days). Every time I picked up They Thirst during my lunch break I enjoyed reading a chapter in which vampires took over Los Angeles.

The plot of They Thirst is fairly simple but also epic in scope... vampires are taking over Los Angeles (the week before Halloween) with the intent to take over the whole world. The vampires are the scary traditional type of vampire - they are burned by holy water and crucifixes, they can't go into sunlight, and they are totally vicious and bite and kill tons of people. No glittery vampires that girls will fall in love with here. There are quite a few characters (most of whom die horrible vampire related deaths) and even a whole subplot about a serial killer on the loose. And like Los Angeles, the characters are all fairly diverse... but in the end the main (human) characters are a cop, a priest, an actor, and a nerdy teenager.

As a horror book it really delivered... there are numerous scary scenes (though I guess most of them are of people being attacked by vampires) and the end really pays off and isn't disappointing at all. There are a few other books on the horror list by Robert McCammon and now I'm really looking forward to reading them. I'll have to give it an A.