Eye Killers (American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series, Vol 13)

Rating:
Summary: Merging traditions, challenging dominance
Review: _Eye Killers_ brings together and reconstructs two traditions in fiction. It is another healing novel by and about American Indians of the Southwest in the tradition of Momaday's Pulitzer Prize winning _House Made of Dawn_ and Silko's _Ceremony_. It is also a vampire novel, but not one that romanticizes vampires for the gothic crowd. _Eye Killers_ presents vampires as the monsters they are. Along the way, however, A. A. Carr presents new antidotes to the stock of vampire lore. I don't want to say too much here and ruin the surprise that many readers seek, so I'll keep it general. Unlike most Western vampire lore that reinforces the truth-claims of Christianity and validates the world-views of Western civilization, _Eye Killers_ offers a narrative that validates Pueblo beliefs, healing rituals, and sacred ceremonies. Furthermore, one of the characters, and one suspects the author, considers the presence of vampires in Albuquerque a symptom of the world out of balance as a consequence of the mining of uranium (and a civilization that considers such exploitation of the land a benefit to humanity). The vampires must be destroyed, but the evil that brought them into existence is a stronger adversary.