Vamplayers by Rusty Fischer

Title: Vamplayers

Author: Rusty Fischer

Release Date: 13th December 2011

My Rating: 4/5

Blurb:

At the Afterlife Academy of Exceptionally Dark Arts, the vampires in training follow one of two tracks: they become either Sisters or Saviors. Of course, everyone wants to be a Savior, swooping into infested high schools in matching red leather jumpsuits and wielding crossbows, putting down swarming vampires with deadly efficiency.

But Lily Fielding is just a Sister—a Third Sister at that, a measly trainee. When Lily and her two Sisters, Alice and Cara, are called out to their latest assignment, she figures it’s just another run-of-the-mill gig: spot the Vamplayer (part vampire, part player), identify the predictably hot, trampy girl he’s set his eyes on, and befriend her before the Vamplayer can turn her to do his bidding.

Finding the sleek and sexy Vamplayer, Tristan, and his equally beautiful and popular target, Bianca, is easy. And when Lily meets the adorably geeky Zander, she too falls under a lover’s spell. But this assignment turns out to be trickier than most when the Third Sister must battle the baddest vampire of all.

In A Nutshell:

A light, entertaining and humorous read, Vamplayers is total comfort food.

My Review:

I’ve read countless novels and short stories by Rusty Fischer and enjoyed them all. In Vamplayers, Fischer has moved away from his usual zombie protagonist and has reworked vampire mythology. They still drink blood but have a serious sweet tooth. Some are good, some are bad and the bad don’t just want to kill, they want to turn their victims, and their tactics have been perfected. Daylight may not be an issue, but garlic and holy water still is. And there is the ever-present pecking order that infiltrates every aspect of society, n both human and vampire worlds. There are rules the undead have to live by, and consequences are severe.

Lily is a Sister, whose job is to identify the Vamplayer before he manages to turn the whole school. The Sisters then call in the Saviors who take the Vamplayer down. Lily is sick of being a Sister but can’t seem to pass the test to become a Savior. When Lily and her fellow Sisters are sent to the latest school, she is determined this will be her last ever assignment as a Sister. The school is just like every other high school; the bitchy popular girls make everyone else’s lives miserable, there’s the hot guy who knows he is, and the nerdy but really totally awesome kids.  This time, Lily is to play the outcast. Her fellow Sisters are also to treat her this way to fit in with the popular crowd and gain their acceptance. Normally this exclusion would end when the girls are behind closed doors, but this time, Cara and Alice begin to take it a bit too seriously. As the girls turn on Lily, she is left utterly alone and the responsibility to find the Vamplayer before the whole school gets turned, falls solely on her shoulders.

With a focus on friendship, stereotypes and peer-pressure, it’s a typical highschool environment, but one that takes the opportunity to show characters who know what they want and try to succeed, no matter the obstacles thrown in their path. While I could see what was going to happen, Lily couldn’t and I think that is common for teenagers, to not look deeper than what is on the surface or beyond first impressions. While the story arc was somewhat predictable, the end certainly wasn’t. After the climatic showdown, I was expecting a very different conclusion but Fischer’s recreated vampire lore opened up a whole new realm of possibilities.

A light, entertaining and humorous read, Vamplayers is total comfort food.

Ushers, INC by Rusty Fischer

Title: Ushers INC
Author: Rusty Fischer

Release Date: 22nd June 2011

My Rating: 4/5

Blurb:
When the streets are full of bloodsuckers, werewolves, zombies and ghouls, where will you turn? The cops don’t know how to stop them, the Army’s pretty much given up and even the Marines are stumped when their bullets and grenades fail to stop the onslaught.

Have no fear, Ushers, Inc. is here! Four high school movie ushers, who collectively have seen over 42,000 hours of B- and C-horror movies know just what to do.

Did you know copper pennies can stop a zombie in its tracks? Abby Cooper, Head Usher, does.
Did you know garlic paste is twice as effective on vampires as garlic cloves? Abby Cooper does.
Did you know werewolves are absolutely petrified of seeing a Hershey’s kiss? Abby Cooper does.

Unfortunately, the monsters aren’t too happy about four geeky ushers beating their butts all over creation. Now the League of Associated Undead (LAD) is converging on Cypress Cove, determined to stop Ushers, Inc. once and for all.

In A Nutshell:
If you like zombie, werewolf and vampire stories that still have the undead being bad, but with plenty of humour and sarcasm thrown in, then Ushers INC is for you.

My Review:
Ushers INC is the story of four relatively normal teenagers; Abby, Zach, Tracy and Cliff who all live together at the Meriwether Home for Wayward Boys and Girls (they are not actually wayward, just orphans). Outside of school hours, they spend every waking moment at Flickers Cinemas, where they not only work as ushers, but also spend hours upon hours watching B and C grade horror movies. The story is set in the future when the undead are known to exist and are allowed to roam the streets, but go pretty much unrecognised to the majority of humans, except when they choose to show their true nature (in the case of vampires) or are forced to (full moon for werewolves).

Our heroes are unwittingly thrown into the spotlight one night when a zombie uprising disrupts Theatre 6 and the four ushers use their collective knowledge from their favourite movies to stop the carnage from spilling out onto the streets. It just so happens that when the police were called, the reporters followed and managed to catch four normal teenagers taking out a bunch of zombies. In a split second decision, ever the opportunist Cliff, declares they are ‘Ushers INC’ and so their little monster fighting team is born.

There is all the usual highschool trouble such as the mean girls, hot boys, crush dramas and who is going to take who to the fall formal, but with that comes the hilarious situations that the ushers get themselves into and the unique ways they manage to pull themselves out of them!

Usher’s INC features lots of humour and sarcasm and a great bunch of friends that stick together, no matter what. There is also a cool female lead in Abby who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty if she has to and who somehow always has lady-luck on her side.

Rusty’s stories revolve around the undead, but with a new spin. The zombies still want to eat your brains, vamps will still suck you dry in the locker-room and werewolves are still going to rip you to shreds, but more often than not, they just want to get on with their lives, even if their true nature does get in the way some of the time!

Rusty Fischer is the author of countless short stories (my current favourite being Zombies Don't Sleep) and poems, as well as newly released novels Zombies Don't Cry and Ushers INC. Many of these are available to download for free on his website and I found that being able to read some of Rusty's work before buying was really helpful and I was left craving more.

I’ve really been quite taken by Rusty's tales of the undead. If I didn’t have so many books sitting on my shelf waiting to be reviewed, I would honestly love to curl up and devour every single one of Rusty’s stories (although I’ve already made quite a dent!). I love them, they’re like comfort food.


Buy Ushers INC on Amazon or Smashwords
Rusty’s website: Zombie’s Don’t Blog

Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! by Rusty Fischer

Title: Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule!
Author: Rusty Fischer

Release Date: July 2010

My Rating: 4/5

Blurb:

The Vampires and Zombies at Barracuda Bay High School have a long-standing truce: don’t mess with us, we won’t mess with you.

Of course, if the human kids at Barracuda Bay High knew they were sitting next to the Living Dead in homeroom, well… all bets would be off.

So when Lucy Frost tries to use the fancy heat-sensored paper towel dispensers in the C-wing girls’ room during a busy break from classes, Fiona Rutherford, the nosiest reporter on the Barracuda Bay Bugle, just happens to witness it. But when she jokingly refers to Lucy as a “zombie,” in the next day’s paper, Fiona unknowingly sets off a chain of events that will change Lucy’s life forever.

Now the vampires want to do away with Fiona, and the only zombie who wants to save her is Lucy. Suddenly Lucy is the only hope Fiona and the rest of her friends have of surviving!

In A Nutshell:
With plenty of zombie humor and sarcasm, Rusty Fischer has adapted the general zombie lore to make way for zombies to have a proper place in YA fiction. Very cool.

My Review:
Lucy is just a normal high school girl trying to get through classes, avoid drawing attention to herself and hope that her crush asks her to the Fall Formal. She's also a zombie. The freezing cold, eat your brains, strong as steel kind. After one tiny little mistake, Lucy has one school day to try and defuse what a Normal decided to publish in the school paper before the zombie and vampire equivalent of the secret service pay her a visit.

Written with plenty of zombie humour and sarcasm, Lucy must come up with a plan to avoid a zombie-vampire apocalypse, go up against the absolutely repulsive vampires that also attend the school, try to avoid getting her new AV Club human friends killed, not freak out the boy she likes and save her own zombie self. Is that too much to ask? Maybe...

I must say, Lucy is one crafty zombie. Unlike a lot of zombie folklore, these zombies are actually pretty smart and fast moving. I mean, they eat brains, shouldn't that make them smart? Lucy comes up with some sneaky plans to avoid the vampires and then attack them but can she count on her zombie friends not to stab her in the back when she tries to save not only the person who outted her, but a human?

I really like the way Fischer has adapted the general zombie lore. It's very cool and makes way for zombies to have a proper place in YA fiction (rather than the mindless drones that are usually featured).

Rusty Fischer is the author of countless zombie short stories (my current favourite being Zombies Don't Sleep) and poems, as well as the newly released novel Zombies Don't Cry. I found that being able to read some of Rusty's work before buying his new novel was really helpful and I was left craving more of his zombie stories.

To download the ebook of Vampires Drool! Zombies Rule! or to read it online, click here.

For information on where you can find Rusty's stories and poems, some of them for free, head to his blog.

To buy Zombie's Don't Cry, head to Amazon or The Book Depository