The Vanquishers is a lighthearted adventure with a dash of horror thrown in. The story centers around a group of long-time friends and the new addition to their group, with whom they form an immediate rapport. The way in which the group is immediately welcoming to a newcomer is a breath of literary fresh air, and this acceptance will resonate with young readers who may be reserved when making friends. Throughout the adventures of this group, they are steadfastly loyal to each other. Whether things are going well or poorly, whether a plan is marvelous or ill-advised, the group is supportive of one another. They are, in short, the kind of friends a young reader would like to have their own adventures with.

Since the story revolves mainly around a mystery that the children must solve, at first the plot moves somewhat slowly as the friends wrestle with what to do when someone important to them goes missing. The children are faced with a problem that seems difficult or perhaps impossible to solve, but they must solve it. Further complicating their investigation are their parents’ strict rules, which they must skirt around to solve the case. This dodging of the rules is for a good cause, of course. The story is interesting, as are the characters. The plot suffers a bit from the fact that the characters, both children and adults, make some decisions that seem like such amazingly bad ideas that it stretches credibility that even an older elementary or young middle school child would take such risks. Without these decisions, the plot would not keep moving along, however, so those can be chalked up to the same decision-making process used by the classic horror movie heroine who inexplicably wears high heels to run through the woods at night. Those movies are none the worse for such foolish actions by the characters, and neither is this book, except in the eyes of particularly perceptive or cautious young readers may wonder, “Why?!?” at some of the choices the protagonists make. Overall, this book is a nice middle-grade twist on the classic vampire legend.

Review of an Advance Reading Copy from the Publisher

Content Analysis:

Profanity/Language: 4 religious exclamations; 2 scatological words,
Violence/Gore: A practical joke results in cartoon violence; characters threaten each other with weapons a few times, including instances of adults threatening a child with weapons; a verbal threat; report of a character bitten by a monster; a few reports of a characters killed by monsters; a few reports of animals killed; report of a character drinking blood; report of a fight (mentioned several times); report of monsters spontaneously combusting for bleeding; report of monsters killed; a few fights without major injury; brief description of wound therapy with blood described; a few instances in which a character cries blood instead of tears; a few creepy scenes a fight in which monsters are killed.

Sex/Nudity: Adults hug or kiss a few times; kids hug each other a few times (not romantic); adults dance together; children dance together (not romantic).

Mature Subject Matter:

Same-sex marriage (one of the characters has two dads); mild bullying; missing children; lying to parents is a prominent theme in the book; one of the characters uses the “they” pronoun, which at first adds some ambiguity to what is going on in a scene if “they” could mean one person or multiple in the context, and this may take some getting used to for a young reader; censorship is discussed briefly in the Afterword.

Alcohol/Drug Use:

None