WARNING! INEVITABLE SPOILERS BELOW! 

Alone in the deathly cold mountains of Alaska, Damir Beloff—who now goes by the alias Damien Bryant—holes himself up, hoping his remote hiding place will keep him safe from the reach of the KGB. Then one night a stranger comes knocking on his cabin door, and quite a strange stranger indeed. This man, this Benjamin Caedrys, knows more than is good for him—more than is good for Damien, such as Bryant’s history in Russia and the fact that he is a real life vampire! Fittingly, the only one in the dark is Damien himself. What does this stranger want, he wonders. He can’t believe it when Ben tells him that he’s looking for a new employee to fill their mall cop opening.

Vampire Mall Cop—VMC from here on in—is a serial authored by Molly Blake, more commonly known throughout the web as Molly B. Serial number one, Damien Versus the Entrail Eater is the first of the series to be released on Kindle Vella (now available as a whole book), with many more stories free to read on her website. The series is composed of comedic action urban-fantasy stories written in a style that is fun for the whole family, though the content can get a little violent for some softie-parental sensibilities. Over-protective parents aside, Molly B’s VMC series really is for everyone. The plot is simple for the most part, pacing quickly and letting the characters and setting do most of the heavy lifting, which is to Molly’s strength. The characters and their dialogues with one another are genuinely funny much of the time, and the setting is wild and wacky without being overly described. No paragraphs of discursion about minutiae which often bog down most fantasy narratives.

Starting with the plot, VMC, at least this first serial run, is pretty basic. Damien is hiding in the middle of nowhere, but he receives his call to adventure via Benjamin offering him a job as a security guard, specifically to remove his aunt Tildy—the titular entrail eater—from the mall premises. Very, very reluctantly, Damien accepts, faces off with his aunt, and then finds that actually, he likes this job after all. And that’s all. There are no big twists or massive surprises, which works really well for this character driven story. Really, it was ultra refreshing to read such quick pacing, which likely came as a consequence of the serial formatting. Each chapter, or episode, contained its own complete miniature plot arc, which meant that conflict was always at the center of what was going on, meaning stakes were constantly established and transformed in the form of new complications all the time—usually having to do with Damien’s paranoid obsession with the KGB and the information file Ben has on him.

That brings us to the characters. Damien, Ben, and others—including Alan the chimera, Spot the ghost-dragon, and boss-fish-man Gar’roth—are all distinct and likeable. It is easy to read each in his own voice, and the character chemistry works even better between them. Damien’s paranoia plays comically off of Ben’s lighthearted bravery and cunning, and Gar’roth’s serious, stoic attitude makes for an equally reflective foil to the skeptical vampire. Similar things can be said for the protagonists interactions with everyone. The only critique to be leveled is that some of the interactions are accidentally suggestive between the mostly male cast. Molly writes this series from the first-person present tense of Damien’s perspective, but the perspective focus and narrative diction frequently give away that VMC is written by a lady. There are even points which accidentally hint at unintended homo-eroticism. It doesn’t help that Camien is a vampire. That being said, it does not spoil the story any, and at times it even lends to the comedy.

Speaking of the humorous tone, it synergizes with the high-urban-fantasy setting. All manner of magical entities exist in this universe, and the mall at which Damien ultimately finds employment is where they all converge. It is a bit ridiculous, but because the story does not take itself too seriously, there really isn’t a need for extreme detail of coherence of world building. It is enough to know that magic and monsters are real in this world, and that there is no predicting what form they will take or what they are capable of. This adds back in an element of surprise stripped out of the plot, which facilitates the fast-fun pacing of the story.

Last to comment on is the prose. It is fairly clean and very easy to understand. Like the plot, it is nothing fancy, but there is an advantage to that. Simple prose seems most befitting for a story carried almost entirely by its characters and their dialogue. While more epic and action oriented stories needs lots of figurative language as not to get bogged down by discursion, VMC gets by just fine via conversation broken up mostly by Damien’s interiority—functionally his inner monologue given the first-person PoV. The character’s voices come through to the rescue, carrying the narrative. And the side benefit to all this is that the story is enjoyable when read aloud for the whole family.

I highly recommend Vampire Mall Cop to anyone looking for a fun, fast, fantasy read with comedic dialogue, short but intense action scenes, and an endless breadth of potential monsters-of-the-week.

Click the link on the image above to read Vampire Mall Cop 1: Damien Versus the Entrail Eater today!