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Vampire Hunter D #27
Vampire Hunter D Volume 27: Nightmare Village
A mixed band of travelers from an inn, spared by seeming chance from a bizarre landslide that rushed and receded like a wave, find shelter in an ancient village older even than the most forsaken settlements on the Frontier! Indeed, for fearful rumor has it that once long ago the village was a testing ground of the Sacred Ancestor…that sought to twist the genes of aliens, humans, and Nobles into a new form of life! What was formed here in the distant past seeks to nourish itself on the travelers and rise again.
Can D save them and destroy the evil legacy—or is his arrival exactly what the village requires for its nightmare to awaken at last?
Can D save them and destroy the evil legacy—or is his arrival exactly what the village requires for its nightmare to awaken at last?
206 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 17, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 27, 2022
The first Vampire Hunter D novel was bad, but in a kind of compellingly goofy way, so I thought I'd give a later one a shot. It's completely incompetent on the most basic level. Whether the author or the translator is more to blame is beyond my ability to judge; I assume they're both at fault. The editor should be embarrassed too, assuming there was one.
Selecting some particularly egregious examples.
1. A group of people are on a hill. There's an earthquake, the viewpoint character, Bligh, faints, and when he wakes up they're looking at an abandoned village. He asks where they are and is told that "While we were all knocked off our feet we fell here. Given that, this would have to be somewhere underground." A very normal way to talk, but fine, except the fact that they are "somewhere underground" is instantly contradicted by literally everything. Before they were knocked off their feet, they were taking shelter from the rain under a tree. After they were knocked off their feet, they're still under a tree in the rain. A few pages later, the tree gets hit by lightning. Nobody is hurt, but "their guardian angel against the wind and rain was no more." Later, the fact that they aren't underground is treated like it's some kind of revelation; an entire group of travelers who apparently believe that it rains underground, and that the wind blows underground, and also things get hit by lightning underground, and also (presumably) that you can see the sky and clouds underground. What is this?
2. A few pages later, Bligh passes out *again* after being sucked down into a mud pit. When he wakes up, he's told by a woman named Charlotte that he was saved by a female vampire. We're told: "The one who did it was still right there," which is incoherent; get rid of the "still." But that's not what I want to talk about. Bligh exclaims:
"You can't be serious?!" (it really is punctuated like that), but the narration goes on to say that
"There could really be no doubt about it. Charlotte had seen the woman, too."
Too? What do you mean, "too"? Charlotte is the *only* person in this scene who saw the woman, Bligh was passed out in the mud. Later, when vampires (called Nobility) come up, "a certain figure crept back into Bligh's mind. Is that the Noblewoman in charge of the place or something?" How could the "figure" of the vampire creep back into Bligh's mind, when he never saw her? Later, he describes her to D so accurately that he can identify her; I guess you could try to argue that maybe Charlotte described her to Bligh, and Bligh is just parroting that description, but I think that the author legitimately forgot that Bligh was not conscious to see his rescuer. Why didn't an editor do something about this?
3. At one point, D is talking to the wife of a warrior who's gotten separated from the group. He questions her about her husband, and when she asks why he's so interested, he tells he that he's met many warriors who want to become vampires. We get the following:
'"It can't be," but is sounded like she was trying to convince herself.'
This is a pretty natural reaction to hearing that her husband is maybe betraying them to become a vampire. But they talk a little more, and then:
'Suddenly realizing something, she gazed at D ... "You don't mean to tell me--my husband wants that, too?"'
So, she didn't realize immediately what D was insinuating? When she exclaimed "It can't be" she wasn't talking about her husband at all, but was objecting to the abstract concept of warriors who want to become vampires?
4. D is set upon by some goons:
"Their movements were strangely sharp and quick and they seemed to be giving D trouble."
Next paragraph: "D disregarded all of them. They didn't even bother him. D didn't move a single step from where he was--or even a fraction of an inch for that matter ... the spearmen were supposedly striking from beyond the reach of the Hunter's sword. And yet they were slain, one after another." What happened to seemingly giving D trouble?
Now it's true that sometimes the novel goes entire *pages* without these sorts of glaring continuity issues, but it's constantly, totally incompetent. It's terribly structured, first of all-D's story and the story of the humans trapped in the village seem to be two basically unrelated novellas that got kind of smushed together. The writing (translation? both?) is bad, with poor phrasing and word choices on every page. Selecting a page at random to illustrate, I find this dialogue, spoken by one vampire to another:
"You were going to go on to say how you believe your warrior surpassed me, Duchess? That assumes me to be the loser." Two things. First, she wasn't "going to go on" to say that, she already said that, less than a page ago. Second, "the loser" of what? Presumably, a completely hypothetical battle that the speaker is having in his head, since there's been no suggestion that he's going to fight the warrior in question.
After twenty-seven books, characters are still introduced like a nine-year-old is telling us how awesome an anime character is: "He is a hellspawn, the result of experiments a millennium after your destruction. His skill in combat is among the top five of the Nobility, a thousand times more violent than any Noble, and always thirsty for blood. Not only that, but he is a demon hell-bent on destroying all of creation. On noticing his true nature, I immediately decided to terminate him, but the Sacred Ancestor stopped me." She'll be telling us his Power Level next. And by the way, the speaker is a vampire; author, translator, or editor, someone should have found a phrase other than "thirsty for blood" to suggest that he's violent, unless that was intended to be a joke, which I'm almost sure it wasn't.
There's one scene where we're explicitly told a room doesn't have a surveillance system set up in it, and then, two pages later ... but no, I'm done. If these examples haven't made my point, nothing will. I came into this in the good-faith hope that the author might have improved in the almost thirty years between writing the first D novel, and writing this one. Instead, he deteriorated. If I wanted to say something nice, some of the human survivors have flashes of good character work and drama, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
Selecting some particularly egregious examples.
1. A group of people are on a hill. There's an earthquake, the viewpoint character, Bligh, faints, and when he wakes up they're looking at an abandoned village. He asks where they are and is told that "While we were all knocked off our feet we fell here. Given that, this would have to be somewhere underground." A very normal way to talk, but fine, except the fact that they are "somewhere underground" is instantly contradicted by literally everything. Before they were knocked off their feet, they were taking shelter from the rain under a tree. After they were knocked off their feet, they're still under a tree in the rain. A few pages later, the tree gets hit by lightning. Nobody is hurt, but "their guardian angel against the wind and rain was no more." Later, the fact that they aren't underground is treated like it's some kind of revelation; an entire group of travelers who apparently believe that it rains underground, and that the wind blows underground, and also things get hit by lightning underground, and also (presumably) that you can see the sky and clouds underground. What is this?
2. A few pages later, Bligh passes out *again* after being sucked down into a mud pit. When he wakes up, he's told by a woman named Charlotte that he was saved by a female vampire. We're told: "The one who did it was still right there," which is incoherent; get rid of the "still." But that's not what I want to talk about. Bligh exclaims:
"You can't be serious?!" (it really is punctuated like that), but the narration goes on to say that
"There could really be no doubt about it. Charlotte had seen the woman, too."
Too? What do you mean, "too"? Charlotte is the *only* person in this scene who saw the woman, Bligh was passed out in the mud. Later, when vampires (called Nobility) come up, "a certain figure crept back into Bligh's mind. Is that the Noblewoman in charge of the place or something?" How could the "figure" of the vampire creep back into Bligh's mind, when he never saw her? Later, he describes her to D so accurately that he can identify her; I guess you could try to argue that maybe Charlotte described her to Bligh, and Bligh is just parroting that description, but I think that the author legitimately forgot that Bligh was not conscious to see his rescuer. Why didn't an editor do something about this?
3. At one point, D is talking to the wife of a warrior who's gotten separated from the group. He questions her about her husband, and when she asks why he's so interested, he tells he that he's met many warriors who want to become vampires. We get the following:
'"It can't be," but is sounded like she was trying to convince herself.'
This is a pretty natural reaction to hearing that her husband is maybe betraying them to become a vampire. But they talk a little more, and then:
'Suddenly realizing something, she gazed at D ... "You don't mean to tell me--my husband wants that, too?"'
So, she didn't realize immediately what D was insinuating? When she exclaimed "It can't be" she wasn't talking about her husband at all, but was objecting to the abstract concept of warriors who want to become vampires?
4. D is set upon by some goons:
"Their movements were strangely sharp and quick and they seemed to be giving D trouble."
Next paragraph: "D disregarded all of them. They didn't even bother him. D didn't move a single step from where he was--or even a fraction of an inch for that matter ... the spearmen were supposedly striking from beyond the reach of the Hunter's sword. And yet they were slain, one after another." What happened to seemingly giving D trouble?
Now it's true that sometimes the novel goes entire *pages* without these sorts of glaring continuity issues, but it's constantly, totally incompetent. It's terribly structured, first of all-D's story and the story of the humans trapped in the village seem to be two basically unrelated novellas that got kind of smushed together. The writing (translation? both?) is bad, with poor phrasing and word choices on every page. Selecting a page at random to illustrate, I find this dialogue, spoken by one vampire to another:
"You were going to go on to say how you believe your warrior surpassed me, Duchess? That assumes me to be the loser." Two things. First, she wasn't "going to go on" to say that, she already said that, less than a page ago. Second, "the loser" of what? Presumably, a completely hypothetical battle that the speaker is having in his head, since there's been no suggestion that he's going to fight the warrior in question.
After twenty-seven books, characters are still introduced like a nine-year-old is telling us how awesome an anime character is: "He is a hellspawn, the result of experiments a millennium after your destruction. His skill in combat is among the top five of the Nobility, a thousand times more violent than any Noble, and always thirsty for blood. Not only that, but he is a demon hell-bent on destroying all of creation. On noticing his true nature, I immediately decided to terminate him, but the Sacred Ancestor stopped me." She'll be telling us his Power Level next. And by the way, the speaker is a vampire; author, translator, or editor, someone should have found a phrase other than "thirsty for blood" to suggest that he's violent, unless that was intended to be a joke, which I'm almost sure it wasn't.
There's one scene where we're explicitly told a room doesn't have a surveillance system set up in it, and then, two pages later ... but no, I'm done. If these examples haven't made my point, nothing will. I came into this in the good-faith hope that the author might have improved in the almost thirty years between writing the first D novel, and writing this one. Instead, he deteriorated. If I wanted to say something nice, some of the human survivors have flashes of good character work and drama, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.
June 13, 2022
Extra star for being better than some of the later installments in the series.
But I kind of also wanna take one away for the fact that Kevin Leahy's translations continue to feel like they are getting more and more disjointed and nonsensical. Far too many times I had to reread a sentence because of an awkward word or phrase. But ultimately that's not the story's problem, so the extra star remains.
As becomes more and more the case as the volumes increase, this story begins following a group of people as they get caught up in some shenanigans and we spend the first quarter of the book with them before our favorite Vampire Hunter shows up. Some of these characters are just cardboard cutouts as usual, but the standouts this time are Bligh and Jolette, probably the only two humans you'll grow any sort of attachment to over the course of the story.
We also get a surprising appearance from none other than and he joins in on the fun about halfway through and remains a fixture until the end, which was a nice and unexpected surprise.
Overall a pretty good story with D, even though we learn little new information about the man himself, we do get some more world building with The Great Wars and what the Nobility and the Sacred Ancestor were up to back in the day.
But I kind of also wanna take one away for the fact that Kevin Leahy's translations continue to feel like they are getting more and more disjointed and nonsensical. Far too many times I had to reread a sentence because of an awkward word or phrase. But ultimately that's not the story's problem, so the extra star remains.
As becomes more and more the case as the volumes increase, this story begins following a group of people as they get caught up in some shenanigans and we spend the first quarter of the book with them before our favorite Vampire Hunter shows up. Some of these characters are just cardboard cutouts as usual, but the standouts this time are Bligh and Jolette, probably the only two humans you'll grow any sort of attachment to over the course of the story.
We also get a surprising appearance from none other than and he joins in on the fun about halfway through and remains a fixture until the end, which was a nice and unexpected surprise.
Overall a pretty good story with D, even though we learn little new information about the man himself, we do get some more world building with The Great Wars and what the Nobility and the Sacred Ancestor were up to back in the day.
July 7, 2025
Not the best in the series. I was hoping for something a bit more classical horror, but after 26 volumes, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised it remained mostly sci-fi horror instead. I love how these later volumes are starting to reveal more and more about what the Nobility were doing thousands of years ago, and hinting more at D's origins. If you're reading out of order, DO NOT read this one unless you've read volume 22 - White Devil Mountain, first. This one strongly builds off of the lore from that novel.
October 30, 2020
Another solid edition, though some of the descriptions wouldn't quite line up for me.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews