A Novel by Hideyuki Kikuchi (Author), and Yoshitaka Amano (Illustrator)

It’s been a while since I’ve read one of these Hideyuki Kikuchi Vampire Hunter D novels, and with a consistent release schedule of almost one a year for forty years, I better get a move on, or I will be 85 by the time I “get caught up”! 1986’s Tale of the Dead Town is the fourth book in the long-running series, and like its predecessors, it chronicles another adventure of the impossibly gorgeous, as well as impossibly strong, titular vampire hunter. While the third book, Demon Deathchase, veered more into the realm of a pulp adventure story, this fourth novel takes a step back into the murder mystery genre to a large degree.

D has been hired by the mayor of a utopian flying city that appears to be as close to living like a member of The Nobility (aka vampires) as a human can dream of in the world of 12090 A.D. The problem is, like with any post-apocalyptic “utopian city” plot in pretty much any story like this, the citizens have a hard time either entering or leaving and the promised “security” that the city is built on is slowly unraveling into a myth. It’s up to D to figure out how The Nobility appears to be attacking people in a place that is supposed to be completely secure from such dangers.

“When a floating city becomes the target of a rash of vampire attacks, only one man can restore the oasis. “The City,” a tiny metropolis of a few hundred sheltered citizens floating serenely on a seemingly random course a few feet above the ground, has long been thought safe from the predation of marauding monsters. It seemed like a paradise. A paradise shattered when an invasion of apparent vampires threatens the small haven.”

The Vampire Hunter D series holds a lot of its secrets pretty close, and patient readers get small morsels of world-building in each subsequent book that truly make the setting here stand out above pretty much any other work of vampire fiction. It honestly feels like something from Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age (Conan the Cimmerian) more-so than any other somewhat derivative vampire story scared to move on past the supposed “rules” established by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The world of Vampire Hunter D is set 10,000 years from a long forgotten nuclear war that nearly destroyed Earth. Humans have tried to climb back out of the precarious situation they placed themselves into, only to become playthings, food, and hunting stock for a long-hidden race of space-faring vampires. Readers see glimmers of technological advance such as nuclear powered weapons, cybernetics, nigh-magical medical treatments, and more that sits diametrically opposed to the plight of “everyday humans” living in what can be best described as medieval squalor.

Mayor Ming’s floating city is once such wonder of this age, and it’s a wonder The Nobility hasn’t tried to wipe it out throughout its long life floating above the ground. The town covers over two square miles. On top of a massive, circular base with thirty foot high walls, the city supports buildings of wood, plastic, and iron all clustered together haphazardly. Armed with a weapon referred to as a “Prometheus Cannon” (that is so powerful it can turn sand into glass from high above), anti-aircraft guns, missile launchers, a force field, and more it is without a doubt one of the more impressive feats of ingenuity readers have come across in this series so far. Like many things in this series, one can surmise that the city is likely a remnant of one of the many ancient wars that scarred The Frontier, an area full of weird surprises like robots and all-manner of demented monster.

Tale of the Dead Town introduces some interesting new concepts such as “imitation vampires” and speaks of some lore regarding The Nobility that took place many years prior to these books. More so than any of the previous books in the series, readers really get an idea of what some of the world of 12090 A.D is like. Once again, it’s little bite-sized chunks, but it’s definitely there. I really liked that the villain in this book got away from a story involving D finding and fighting a random member of The Nobility that decided to start snacking on some girl somewhere, which was basically the plot of the last three with a few caveats. This book goes to show that this setting is pretty expansive, and the author has room to do all sorts of stories moving forward.

I will applaud the author for getting away from some of his less endearing tropes this time around, most notably, not introducing a young female tag-along that immediately falls madly in love with D, and reducing said character to nothing more than a vessel to inflict trauma on. Yes, a character named Lori Knight is initially introduced in a similar manner to previous series heroines, but my expectations were immediately, and thankfully, defied. I’m sure that when we leave the walls of the civilized nature of The Mobile City, we’ll likely see the worst of humanity doing some of the awful stuff from the previous three volumes, but for a quick moment I will savor the change.

Tale of the Dead Town is a solid volume in this series, with my only let-down being that the final act is somewhat strangely conceived and relies a lot on “Deus Ex machina” plot contrivances. I never felt that the villains of the story had a plan that congealed very well, leaving the ending a series of weird coincidences almost. That aside, the book was a fun read and the overall worldbuilding was awesome. I know this series doesn’t like having recurring characters so far, but I’d love to see more of Lori and Tsurugi, as their inclusion was really interesting and I feel more can come of them in the future, especially if Tsurugi follows through with a plan he confided to D. Join me again very soon for a review of yet another book in this series, only 87% more to go!

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