Cornish Cream?

One of Tomeopathy’s belated New Year commitments was to read and report on more independently published fantasy, to that end I recently picked up the first book in ‘Brian Helsing: The World’s Unlikeliest Vampire Killer: Mission #1: Just Try Not to Die’ by Gareth K Pengelly, an urban-ish, Cornwall set, supernatural fantasy series.

Hands up if you remember the cultural phenomenon that was the late Nineties bastion of laddishness ‘Loaded’ magazine? I could be wrong, but I suspect that Gareth K Pengelly does. If ‘Loaded’ wrote fantasy novels, they’d probably turn out a lot like Brian Helsing: The World’s Unlikeliest Vampire Killer. This a book that is very definitely not for everyone. The language used, is very, very, erm, earthy(?) to say the least, within the first three lines I’d seen a word that I’m pretty sure I haven’t stumbled over before in fantasy literature (clue, it rhymes with ‘hunting’). The author appears to take a vindictive pleasure in detailing the personal shortcomings of the lead character and some of his life choices. The female characters serve mostly to titillate, described in the style of an adolescent fantasy (actually that’s not very fair, I think most adolescents would be a little more original than this) and draped throughout the story as imaginary window dressing (I have a theory that, based on the frequency of their use, Mr Pengelly may well have shares in the adjective buxom and its synonyms). The whole thing is one big cliché, it’s got big cars, big guns, big boobs, and a mystical school for vampire killers, complete with James Bond style gadget department, based just round the corner from Brian’s house. Who needs subtlety when you can just write the most derivative plot going and smash through things with a massive literary sledge hammer? There is a twist, Brian’s a bit of a dweeb, but it’s not very original.

So, it’s awful then? I’m not sure that I’d go quite that far, it’s certainly never going to be everyone’s cup of tea. The author cites Terry Pratchett as his inspiration, which suggests good taste if nothing else. I found no visible traces of this inspiration anywhere in the book though, seemingly of far greater influence is the humour and delivery of the comic Frankie Boyle, some parts leave you wincing, drawing breath through your teeth, shaking your head and thinking “too far, too far”, but other parts are reasonably funny despite yourself.

There were two things I did like about it. The first thing that I liked was its use of modern day vernacular, this is very much a book set in current times, and the language and cultural references used reflect that. The second thing that I really liked, it was short! The full title is only slightly shorter than the book itself, it took only slightly longer to read than it does to watch another cultural phenomenon of the Nineties, ‘Trainspotting’. Having just finished a properly epic series it made a nice change to read something so short, snappy and totally un-reliant on brain power. If you like your books to be short on plot, but heavy on car crashes, explosions, and ‘buxom’ young women, look no further.