Filth Eaters

Multiple generations of vampires serve as a metaphor for the Chicano experience in this provocative outing from Romo (El Puente/The Bridge). In 1099, in the Indus Valley, a bathhouse attendant named Shandor is bitten by ancient vampire Kali. “Drink,” says Kali, offering her own blood, “or you will die”—a phrase that becomes a refrain throughout the centuries-long story of Shandor’s lineage. Next, in late-15th-century Spain, Shandor, now a vampire, turns Radamés, the idle and illegitimate son of a local courtier. In 1864, Radamés makes local laborer Carlos his servant. Using Carlos’s ability to walk in daylight, Radamés leaves Spain for the New World, where he meets Tepín, a vampire of Aztec descent, possessed of a deeper and more ancient power than Radamés’s European vampiric lineage. These Filth Eaters are unhurt by silver and can wed and bear children. The two fall in love and bear a son, Doro, whom the reader meets as a violent, drug-addled livestreamer in a postapocalyptic 2070s New York City. The product of centuries of colonization, domination, and survival, Doro is unsure if he wishes to continue living. Romo adds texture to the narrative with evocative descriptions of Tepín’s Mesoamerican vampire culture and the suffering her people endured at the hands of the Spaniards and the Catholic Church. This postcolonial novel teems with intriguing ideas. (May)