by Mike Collins

If there is one think Mike Mignola is good at it's creating an atmosphere of gothic horror. With his new joint effort with novelist Christopher Golden he takes the dial and cranks it to eleven. "Baltimore, or the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire" is a dark book. It starts out with a British Army unit being ambushed in a German forest and only gets darker from there. Ancient vampires, demonic bears wearing human skinsuits and a monster in a lake are only some of the horrors present in Baltimore.

The story opens with Lord Henry Baltimore as he leads his Army unit across a German forest hoping to catch the Hessians unaware. Things go horribly wrong as you would expect and Baltimore and his unit are ambushed. Baltimore himself is shot in the leg and in a ditch of dead bodies. He winks in and out of consciousness seeing what he thinks are kites on the battlefield. He realizes with horror that these kites are actually bats which are now feasting on the dead.

Baltimore, in a panicked frenzy, attacks a bat with his bayonette and unleashes a series of events that spiral the world into darkness. As retribution for the wounds given to him by Baltimore the vampire breathes into Baltimore's wound poisioning him and sending a plauge known as the red death across the world.

From here we meet three people who were a friend to Baltimore through different periods in his life, a sea captain that brought him home from the war, the battlefield doctor who amputated his leg and a childhood friend. They are drawn to a pub in a walled in, fortress like London. The book changes it's narrative pace here in following these three men as each recounts a tale of a paranormal event in their lives. This is probably the only complaint I have about the book. I think it's a dangerous thing to leave your title character for the better part of the novel.

After we learn who these men are and why Baltimore has chosen them to come, we learn what has happened to Lord Baltimore. Told by journal entries, we get one of the big set pieces of the novel. Baltimore, carrying harpoon and by my count at least five or six different guns takes out a vampire horde in a Romanian church. It's like a more gothic version of the oepning scene from the first Blade movie and it is a dandy. Swords, harpoons, axes and all manner of guns are used as Baltimore shows that he himself has become something more than human.

I found the finale to be a bit of a letdown. There is anoter big action set piece but when Baltimore finally catches the vampire he has been pursuing the length of the novel it's anticlimatic to say the least. I do like that Mignola and Golden left themselves room for a sequel. Lord Henry Baltimore is a well thought out and written character. I wish he had more screen time in the book.

Mike Mignola's illustrations that span the length of the book are beautiful. They are stark and expressive. The book itself is wonderfully oversized with rough pages and a cover that is as good as anything Mignola has done in recent memory. Despite my desire for a better ending I would still readily recomend this book to fans of horror fiction or fans of either writer. The book is strongly written and has some very memorable settings and character. It's well worth your time if you are a genre fan to give it a read.