Review of "Boneyard, Volume 1," by Richard Moore

 

Review of

Boneyard, Volume 1, by Richard Moore, ISBN  9781561633166

Five out of five stars

Kept my attention, not sure why

 There are some books that you read that just keep your attention and you are not really sure why. It isn’t really the depth of the story or the power of the dialog or even the eye-catching nature of the images. This story is in the category mentioned in the first sentence and fits all of the criteria listed in the second. Michael Paris is a rather ordinary single man on his way to the remote town of Raven Hollow. His eccentric grandfather recently died and left him a small plot in the town. Michael has never seen it and has no interest in it so he is going there to sign the papers so that the city can buy it from him.

 However, when his car breaks down he hitches a ride and has to walk the last segment. When he arrives he finds the townsfolk carrying torches and being whipped into a fever pitch with the goal being to go to Michael’s property and burn the tenants out. The property that he has inherited is a graveyard and it is inhabited by a collection of lovable monsters. They are largely from typical monster stock but with notable exceptions. The vampire is a lovely girl named Abbey that promises she won’t bite; there is a skeleton, a wisecracking black bird and a creature similar to that from the black lagoon that is female with barely covered large breasts. She also has the hots for Michael, which is a bit of a problem, as her husband is a behemoth that would dwarf the wrestler Andre the Giant.

 Michael generally takes it all in stride, except after he tries to pull Abbey from the path of a car and only succeeds in pulling off her top. At that point he protests a great deal about what he wasn’t really gawking at. The idea of a man verbally stumbling over seeing the breasts of a good-looking female vampire is very amusing.

 The story has so many slightly humorous moments and they are so synergistically compatible that the end result is a very good story. Some points were so memorable that I had to go back and read them again when I was writing this review.