Being a long-time fan of everything vampire, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING immediately caught my eye. I expected some sort of urban fantasy, and instead what I got was a paranormal thriller, unlike anything I had ever read. Our vampires, Gloamings, correspond in all appearances to the accepted vampire mythology: they cannot be captured on film, they must avoid the sun, they sleep buried in the earth, and of course, their sustenance comes from human blood. But Raymond A. Villareal has built upon this mythology in dizzying new ways, and his research and knowledge in almost every area of life are simply astonishing, especially medicine.

Set in the very near future, A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING feels like an actual chronicle, and it is so meticulously crafted that I wonder if, in a hundred years from now, it might be taken as fact and not fiction. A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING is also a scathing satire on our obsession with beauty, success, and athletic performances; it is also a reflection on right and wrong. Villareal also demonstrates his considerable wit, starting with the Gloaming moniker, mentions of a popular female singer, and a short passage from a fictitious TMZ article that had me in stitches.

A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING is told from several points of view, often in the first person, and the transition between the various voices is as seamless as can be. It is imperative that I mention the remarkable quality of the writing, especially the absence of linguistic and stylistic tics, which is almost unheard of in a debut novel. There are many characters, all different and all superbly fleshed out; the pace is steady and swift; there are no plot holes, which considering the scope of the story is astounding, and it is riveting from beginning to end. Fans of Michael Crichton will be ecstatic, because A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING owes quite a bit to the medical thriller genre as well. Raymond A. Villareal is a dazzling new voice in the world of fiction and his next book will not come out soon enough for me!