Shan
will
continue
to draw
"Goosebumps"
(Scholastic)
graduates
with
this
third
installment
in the
series.
Here, he
sends
his
eponymous
teenaged
protagonist,
who is
still
not
quite a
full-blooded
(so to
speak)
vampire,
along
with
scaly
snake-boy
Evra and
century-old
Larten
Crepsley
on a
mysterious
mission.
They are
to kill,
as it
eventually
turns
out, a
rogue
"vampaneze,"
a member
of a
minority
group
that
believes
in
killing
its
victims,
draining
their
blood
rather
than
just
taking
sips. In
the
process,
young
"Darren"
meets
vivacious
human
(probably,
but stay
tuned)
Debbie
Hemlock,
and
learns a
little
more
about
Mr.
Crepsley's
checkered
background.
The
game's a
little
slow to
develop,
but
after a
gory
meat-locker
scene,
much
running
about in
sewer
tunnels,
and
lines
like
"When I
came to,
I found
myself
face to
face
with a
skull.
Not any
old
skull,
either-this
still
had
flesh on
it, and
one of
the
eyeballs
was
floating
in its
socket,"
the
vampaneze
meets a
suitably
horrible
end,
described
in
stomach-churning
detail.
The
story is
compulsively
readable,
but it's
not for
the
squeamish.- |