Viktor Valentine wishes he were as excited for the start of seventh grade as everyone around him seems to be. Even his one and only friend, Damon, can’t help but seem eager to start the new school year, despite always being the first to complain about their small, boring town of Nowhere. All Viktor wants is for summer to never end—to hang out with his best friend eating ridiculous amounts of junk food and playing endless rounds of their favorite vampire-hunting video game. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
But things insist on changing around him. The school year does inevitably start, bringing with it a myriad of new worries and anxieties. Damon, already a popular kid, seems to want to spend his time hanging out with other people, and Viktor is afraid of being left behind. There are also the mysterious new neighbors, the youngest of whom takes a liking to Viktor—a feeling he would very much reciprocate if only he could find a way to overcome his infinite awkwardness. Most worrying of all, something is apparently going on with his parents, who are acting weirder than usual, keeping odd hours and returning home with deep, dark stains on their clothes and lips….
The Chronicles of Viktor Valentine was, despite the promise of its excellent cover, just an okay read for me. I was very into the novel for the bat’s share of it, when it was a mostly traditional but charming coming-of-age story about a seemingly regular kid dealing with growth and change and coming to terms with the fact that vampires may or may not exist in his world. Many of the characters were endearing and felt—despite some curiously stylized dialogue—entirely real. In particular, I enjoyed the depiction of Viktor and Damon’s relationship. It felt genuine, with author Z Brewer striking that delicate, bittersweet balance between faithful and fickle that feels so fundamental in youthful friendships. The setting—a small, sleepy suburban town with the appropriate name of Nowhere—felt suitably realized as well, full of familiar and quaint elements. It all came together to form an atmosphere that was cozy and nostalgic, if a little confining.
Unfortunately, though, most of these charms were thrown away during the novel’s third act, where the story felt as if it was being forcefully shoved into an entirely different narrative. Which seemed, in fact, to be the case, as I found out soon after finishing that Viktor Valentine is supposed to take place in the author’s shared sanguine universe. I had no knowledge of Brewer’s vampiric saga beforehand, so this is not a judgment against it, but I do still expect complete and satisfying narratives from individual installments, particularly when they’re meant to be the launch of a spinoff series. That’s something I felt was taken away here in favor of crossovers, complications, and cliffhangers. Gone was the folksy familiarity of the characters—replaced by stilted, tired archetypes. The most egregious example of this can be found in Viktor himself, whose story of awkward adolescence and self-discovery is suddenly overshadowed by a hero’s quest that was nowhere evident at the beginning of the book. It was a climax filled with baffling choices, and I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
Then again, maybe this is all more of a me thing. Fans familiar with the established series will likely find a lot more to enjoy here, particularly in discovering all the interconnected bits and scattered cameos that I surely missed out on. Alas.
ricardo reading 