Fun and light, I found Victor Gischler’s Vampire a Go-Go to be entertaining. It was very reminiscent of Christopher Moore to me, in the sort of lightly vulgar and irreverent style of supernatural comedic horror, with a bit of sex thrown in. And the title is pretty awesome. The story mainly centers around Allen, a mostly unremarkable young grad-student who is sort of rushed along through events for the greater part of the story until he finally has enough and grows a pair. Yeah, he’s that kind of protagonist. But it’s ok, because there’s enough comedy thrown in - and not all of it at Allen’s expense.
Allen finds himself facing his upcoming summer abroad in Prague with dread - he’s to be the research assistant for a disliked professor. Allen goes to a party at the professor’s home where he meets up with his friend Penny - who obviously has a thing for him which he equally obviously can’t see because he’s blinded by his need to seek out soul sucking bitches. Oh yah and then he meets the vampire. The party is actually unimportant except for that it’s chalk full of foreshadowing.
Once in Prague, Allen sort of mopes around for a bit, oversees the professor’s packages that are supposed to arrive - one of which to the reader obviously contains a coffin - and then goes to a local bar. Where he unexpectedly meets up with a priest he knows and they sit down for some drinks. Pretty soon Allen is lured by an attractive young woman named Amy out into the night - a woman who had slipped him a cryptic message warning him against the priest - and is hit over the head and shoved into the trunk of a car. At the end of Allen’s ride in the trunk he is taken to meet Basil, a man who promises to explain it all. After some initial apologies and explanations the scene proceeds as follows:
‘This doesn’t have anything to do with me,’ Allen said.
‘I’m afraid it very soon might,’ Basil said. ‘For you see, your very own Professor Evergreen has come to Prague, not to write a chapter on Kafka as he’d have you believe, but rather to plunder the secret dungeons of Prague Castle in search of the philosopher’s stone.’
Allen went slightly pale, the surprise plain on his face.
‘I can understand that this might be a lot for you to digest,’ Basil said.
‘It’s not that.’ Allen swallowed hard. ‘It’s just that there’s a priest at the window with a machine gun.’
And there was. Lots of carnage. Allen gets pulled out of there by pretty young Amy and they find themselves on the run.
For me most of the book read like a cross between Christopher Moore and The Da Vinci Code. The story is mostly told by a ghost, who breaks up the action with some really odd anecdotes that overall felt like it was better suited to the Twilight Zone than to story at hand. There was of course the vampire, who disappointingly didn’t figure as prominently in the story as I expected, what with the title and all. But upon further consideration this may be for the best, the vampire was rather compulsion, sex and lust and not much else, and I am rather tired of hyper sexualized vampires as I’ve stated before. There was also a fun lycanthrope and quite a bit of sorcery - good witches covens and evil warlocks - as well as some fun and unexpected zombies.
The story is pretty fun, but for me the writing got in the way much more than it entertained. It attempted to be clever and witty with lots of thrown in one liners that were very hit or miss. Very often I just found it annoying. Or pointlessly vulgar. I was also bothered by the narrator and the seeming stylistic inconsistencies that became most apparent through the narrator’s anecdotes and breaks in the narrative. In some ways it really reads almost like an extended screenplay. It the kind of story that could easily make a fun little gore and comedy filled horror flick. In no way subtle. Overall I found it enjoyable, the good and entertaining outweighing the annoying. I don’t expect to remember very much of it, or to ever read it again. However, that said, I think I’ll give Gischler’s other hot title a chance, Go-Go Girls of the Apocolyse.
