Kidnapped, turned, and locked away in a concrete basement, high school student Sey-Mi is taught the ways of the damned. Her captors, beautiful and malignant, cruel and insane, torture her until she pledges allegiance to the Gwanlyo, a secret organization of vampires now obsessed with bringing her into their ranks. Enter Cheol Yu and Hyeri, rogue members who want to liberate vampires and set them upon humankind like a plague. Their first act of rebellion is to persuade Sey-Mi to join them in their twisted objective of unraveling this draconian society of the dead. Before they can do that, they will have to dodge the Natural Police, an order within the Gwanlyo whose objective is to hunt down and butcher any vampires that break the organization’s strict rules, and who are currently tracking Cheol Yu for murdering one of their own. Hyeri, who is no stranger to the organization’s wicked methods of agonizing punishment, is hell-bent on bringing them down, and is prepared to lead Cheol Yu through the dark, abandoned streets of the Gwanlyo’s compound where Sey-Mi is being held captive. She doesn’t intend to go in unarmed, however. Hyeri has a plan – one that might just burn the Gwanlyo to the ground.Will Sey-Mi place her loyalties in the Gwanlyo that rules through terror? Will she side with rebellious conspirators who strive to bring hell to the world? Or will she carve out her own path through the flesh and bone of anyone who stands in her way? Find out in Butchers, a novella of extreme horror.

I’m always a sucker (heh!) for a good vampire story, so I was excited to give Todd Sullivan’s Butchers a whirl. Thanks to the author for sending a copy my way!

The story is set in Seoul, South Korea, and things get going quickly in this slim novella. There’s a couple different POVs, but at the heart of the story is a secret & brutal vampire society known as the Gwanlyo. The target of their latest recruitment efforts is Sey-Mi, a young student. Captured & tortured, Sey-Mi is given an ultimatum: join the Gwanlyo & never see her family again, or be killed outright.

Yikes.

On the other side of things are two rogue members of the Gwanlyo who seem a bit unhinged & like they just want to watch the world burn.

This is a fast-moving story, laced with some pretty brutal action sequences. Sullivan has some fun with vampire mythology & adds uniqueness to a pretty well-established set of “rules.” I especially enjoyed the idea that these vampires have to actively work on slowing themselves down in order to blend in in the human world. Their natural speed is much faster than a human, so in order to not draw attention to themselves, they have to focus a lot of energy on moving very slow.

Fair warning, there are some difficult scenes in this book, including torture & sexual abuse of a child.

Butchers is a solidly written effort, but one I didn’t find myself feeling super connected to. It’s dark & violent, and Sullivan does great work describing locations & creating a moody atmosphere. I’m just not sure I was rooting for any one character in particular, which I think impacted my overall opinion of the story. That said, Todd Sullivan is more than up to the task of delivering a pretty gnarly & visceral vampire tale, one that doesn’t overly concern itself with the traditions of vampire stories.