bookheaven | Carmilla: The First Vampire

Carmilla: The First Vampire by Amy Chu

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 read. I wanted to rate it higher but it felt a little rushed but that could be entirely down to what Dark Horse contracted for as a comic book and more importantly the main character makes so many dumb choices I wanted her Yeh Yeh to slap her into next week.

It's the mid 90s (just a couple years after I was working in the city) in NYC, the year of the Rat and Athena is a social worker being swamped by homelessness, drugs, the AIDS epidemic and kids being tossed out for being gay. (I feel her, I really do, having been there working with those problems). Several young women end up dead and she doesn't feel like the police care.

She looks into it because one of the murdered girls was her client, tracking her to a club called Carmilla. There she meets both Violet, the young girl working the coat check, and Mai Tai, the transwoman working the bar. The night gets weird and Athena ends up at her Yeh Yeh's (grandfather). He raised her and now teaches tai chi in the park.

Athena isn't appropriately alarmed when Violet shows up at her and her live-in girlfriend, Morgan's home and invites her in (something she might have done in the past) and here is where the story loses points for me. It starts running on far too predictable rails. The red flags were the size of circus tents but Athena doesn't see them. Morgan does. Yeh Yeh does. Athena listens to no one.

It ends about how you'd imagine it will. Still, overall the story is good as is the art. It's nice to see the legend of Carmilla still getting some love. I did like the twist Yeh Yeh tossed in there. I would have liked even more Asian folklore as it's applied with a light brush. This does set up for a sequel. I wouldn't say no to that.

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