Redhead Town
Deborah Sheldon
PsychoToxin Press, 2024
162 ppg., Ebook
ISBN: 9798865868330
We all know what vampires are, right? Yeah, bloodsuckers. And pretty much undead. As in, no longer alive. Unalive. Now take everything you know about vampires and imagine that is someone you have to work with.
That’s the situation for Mark Murphy in Deborah Sheldon’s new novella, Redhead Town. Except the vampires in Sheldon’s story are not IMMEDIATELY vampires once they’ve been bitten. They go through a process first, slowly transforming into bloodsuckers.
Except, you can’t call them a bloodsucker. Or a vampire. Or even the popular term, “redhead,” as it is a derogatory term for vampires in this story.
In this dystopian world where vampires live and walk among mere mortals, Mark Murphy is scared shitless. He is not only scared of the redheads, which he loathes with a fierceness, but he is also scared for his wife and son’s safety. He’s scared of the kind of world his son must grow up in, where he is forced to live alongside vampires, forced to work with them, and may even get attacked by them despite all precautions that are taken, such as armed guards looking out for the civilians, and anti-bite collars people can wear and the ankle alarms some vampires who work with mortals must wear.
For Mark Murphy, it’s just not enough. He does not feel, as the county does, that vampires deserve a place in society. If he had it his way, they’d all get a bullet in the head. But he cannot have it his way and he feels trapped.
That is, until someone he meets provides a way out: A rebellious group called The Refusal.
And as I continued to read this story, I asked myself the same question the author poses in the book’s blurb: Will he risk it all and fight back?
I really enjoyed reading this book. It is SUCH a unique story! Accept vampires as productive members of society? Allow them to wander the streets and mingle with the people? Oh, no. God, no. But YES. That’s exactly what happens in this story.
And I kept asking: WHY?? Are you insane??
Apparently,
the vampires in this story are not the same as the vampires popularly depicted
in movies and TV shows. Maybe that is why they are allowed to co-exist with
people? And even have jobs?
I admit that I totally understood the way Mark felt about vampires. I mean, no matter what stage they are in or how they act, they ARE still vampires! I mean, at some point, they’ll get to the stage where they start attacking people. Is it really worth the risk?
I mean, personally, I think the best solution is to lock them up in a kennel and shoot them when they go full vampire, just like in Old Yeller!
But that’s not what happens here, and that’s part of the thing that kept me reading the story. On one hand, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and watch this whole very-thought-out and well-planned system of having vampires co-existing with humans all go to pot. On the other, I wanted to know if that’s really what happens. Does the whole structure really collapse? Or does it actually work?
And as a parent, I also understood Mark and Bernie’s concerns about raising a child in this kind of society. Was their child going to be safe? Will their kid live to adulthood? Mark and his wife, Bernie, are unable to move out of the town that was established specifically for vampires to live among humans (thus the title, Redhead Town), so they make the best of things. But it’s hard. And it’s scary.
This and all of the silly rules, weird society norms and a secret voice of rebellion is what awaits readers of this book. I read this story and kept wondering if there was any chance to get away from all the Designated Areas, the bulging population of redheads and the governmental restrictions making life unbearable. It’s the kind of story that made me think, made me worry, but ultimately made me ask myself how much of this was fiction…until it became reality?
Five stars.
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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