"A galloping, worlds-spanning adventure that Dante himself might have enjoyed." - Kirkus Reviews (full review follows blurb)When Kurt saw the beautiful girl from the club walk into his subway car, he was sure God was giving him a second chance. But she drugged him, kidnapped him, and offered him up as a human sacrifice to Satan.
Just his still-beating heart was supposed to go through the portal to Hell. But when Alain and his friends disrupted the ceremony, Kurt accidentally fell through alive and whole. Now Kurt will have to make his way through Hell, Purgatory, and into Heaven... and convince God to save a vampire’s soul... or he’s never getting home.Enter a multiverse of misfit souls with this first exciting installment in The New Heroes of Old(TM)!
---FULL KIRKUS REVIEW---A galloping, worlds-spanning adventure that Dante himself might have enjoyed.
Bulmash reimagines macabre archetypes in this paranormal thriller.
Alain Beaudreaux is essentially a good man turned bad after the U.S. Army transforms him into an undead vampire and sets him and the rest of his fanged-toothed unit loose against the Third Reich during World War II. It isn’t long before the good-hearted Alain runs afoul of his own comrades and there’s hell to pay within the ranks. Decades later, Alain comes to the rescue of a hapless normal man named Kurt Gray who’s been kidnapped by a group of girls he met at a club to be used as a human sacrifice. Together, they’re soon plunged into an interdimensional portal that opens pathways to the realms of Heaven and Hell-and to the entire multiverse beyond. Along the way, Kurt and his newly formed band of brothers are tasked with seeking an audience with God Almighty to petition for Alain’s soul. The story is a two-fisted odyssey full of bone-crushing blows and skull-spitting hammerlocks. Bulmash lavishly choreographs each explosive obstacle in painstaking detail and unabashed gusto: "Catching Reese’s right arm as he swung it up to defend himself, Kurt held it away and rained down punch after punch at Reese’s head." Fisticuffs are one thing, but readers should be forewarned that the author also has a penchant for the grisly and isn’t afraid of going for the throat and tearing out a larynx or two. An early establishing scene involving Alain’s initial transformation into a neo-Nosferatu is especially jarring-and so horrifically ghastly that some readers might seek immediate absolution from the nearest porcelain god they can get their arms around. Amid all the blood and guts, Bulmash serves up some nifty twists and trenchant observations about the nature of human existence.
A galloping, worlds-spanning adventure that Dante himself might have enjoyed.
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