Guy Friday: Let's Fight Vampires!

Ma. Roger.The Vampire Combat Field Guide: A Coloring and Activity Book For Fighting the Bloodthirsy Undead
October 6th 2015 by Berkley
Copy provided by publisher

While the interest in vampire romances has faded since since the Twilight movies, many readers still like books about fighting monsters. While this, as a coloring book, isn't something that libraries will purchase, it would be a fun Halloween gift for your teenage zombie war monger.

Important information, starting with vampire anatomy and different assault tactics, is presented. This is usually just a sentence or two, but will be illustrated with helpful diagrams so you know how to do a flank blitz (upper right picture on cover) or can identify the type of vampires from their pictures. There is also a workbook; a combat strategy scenario guide is followed by a weapons selection worksheet. Tools and fighting techniques are addressed. There is some blood and gore shown, but it is all in black line drawings, waiting for the blood thirsty reader to wear out a red crayon on the pages. An interesting inclusion is a guide to silent hand signals that can be employed while fighting, so as not to draw the vampires' attention by  noise.

As a survival guide to fighting vampires, this is really quite good. The pictures are okay for illustrating, but leave something to be desired as a coloring book. There are no backgrounds for the pictures, and some pages only have outlines of hands to color. These are also rather small pictures, and often have a lot of black line filler. I am very picky about my coloring books, and prefer pictures that can accommodate a lot of different colors. That being said, my daughter, who has followed the surge in adult coloring books with interests, wants my copy of this book to give to her college roommate!

To go along with this survival guide, I recommend the following books:

Brewer, Heath. The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod
de la Cruz, Melissa. Blue Bloods
Henderson, Jason. Vampire Rising (series)
Hill, Will. Department 19
Moore, Peter. Red Moon Rising
Rees, Douglas. Vampire High
Shan, Darren. Cirque du Freak
Westerfeld, Scott. Peeps