WARNING! INEVITABLE SPOILERS BELOW!

The strange and supernatural are drawn to Seattle, WA—not just in real life, but even more so in the historically and mythologically inspired urban fantasy tragic comedy that is the Dracula’s Guest series by Amaya Tenshi. The second novel, Dracula’s Match, doubles-down on all of the beloved, above mentioned elements—richer history-real world affecting internal and external character conflicts creating drama and at times campy comedy with a serious edge.

Dracula’s Match picks up within months of where Guest left off. Our co-protagonist, Cammy, is mourning the death of her best friend Heather (a death brought about—sort of—by her own hands; though she was a vampire by then), all the while trying to find her own meaning in life. Why bother going to college? Why work at the Mindful Bean? What’s the point of any of it?

So too does Dracula ask himself the same questions. What point is there to go on in a world unfurling into increasing degeneracy—not that he has a choice, strigoi that he is—and that makes it all the more torturous for our historical Christian Vlad the Impaler.

Such is the theme of the novel, the struggle to answer that question, “What is the meaning of one’s life?” And the plot’s central conflict ties right in. The main villain, one draugr ex-professional wrestler, is back with a Nordic vengeance against the fake, superficial, cultureless, inauthentic blah that is modern America. Or at least Seattle.

While this theme was always present, it is much more heavily focused on in Match to grand effect. The story, while still humorous in places, takes many dark and brooding tones, giving it a depth of seriousness which Guest didn’t quite grasp. This has a number of benefits: The host-guest relationship and the natural foil-effect between Cammy and Vlad shows more starkly. It doesn’t just feel like a massive age and culture gap between them. The moral gap gapes like an abyss. Cammy’s modern sensibilities—even the ones a modern conservative westerner would hold today—get challenged by now mostly forgotten modes of being. This applies to Cammy and the other supernatural creatures as well. She struggles but slowly starts to understand in part that their values are different than hers. What to Cammy seems a contradiction isn’t to someone or something which believes different axioms. This gives Cammy more room and opportunities to develop. Not fast enough for Vlad, but enough that the reader wants to see her finally “get it.”

Dracula, too, shows more of his struggles. He truly hates what the world has become, just as he hates what has become of him. But there is faith. A flicker of faith keeps the man going despite the ever dimming darkness of modern decline. This internal struggle culminates in a couple key scenes worth mentioning: (1) when Vlad explains that he believes Cammy to be sent by God, a kind of intervention necessary to bring him back from the brink of despair; and (2) the final confrontation with the draugr. That is worth talking about all on its own.

There are many big fight-pieces, but there is no final climatic battle, and it is the best ending to the book a reader could hope for. It was incredibly satisfying to see Vlad talk down the big bad while, in a strong sense, talking down a mirror image of himself. The humanization of what was theretofore assumed a mindless killing machine felt truly earned over the course of the novel. Cammy got to help a lot with researching the revenant, making her more useful—giving her more purpose. And what she discovered was the purposelessness that created the monster in the first place, the same nihilism gnawing at Dracula, the same nibbling questions which he answers as best he can to assuage the draugr’s rage, to offer him closure and assurance—a meaningful final death to what would otherwise be pointless anger and struggle. It was all very elegantly handled.

One could go on, but instead you should buy a copy and read for your own pleasure. If you haven’t, go pick up a copy of Dracula’s Guest for a fun introduction to the story and setting. Then, once you’re through with vampires attacking Seattle en masse, grab Dracula’s Match for a deeper, colder, more intense dive into a compelling character drama relevant to modern times, all while being couched in an action packed urban fantasy setting brimming with folkloric and mythological beings. Or just skip straight to Dracula’s Match. It’s good enough to stand on its own. It’s also good enough to read in one or two sittings (that’s no exaggeration; I read the first half casually in a day, and I’m not a fast reader). So what are you waiting for? click the cover above and get your copy of Amaya Tenshi’s Dracula’s Match today!