Roses of Blood on Barbwire Vines By D.L Snell

reviewed by Wayne Simmons, author of the forthcoming 'Drop Dead Gorgeous.'

Author: D.L. Snell

Publisher: Permuted Press

Vampires and zombies have rarely been bosom buddies, to my knowledge. Not in pulp horror fiction, anyway. In fact, it may be fair to say that these two undead heavyweights of horror are the gore equivalent of chalk and cheese (brains and intestines?) Polar opposites, if you like.

In the red corner, you have the Romero-style zombie, a shambling bag of putrid flesh (no offence, lads!), slobbering and drooling out parts of its own body. Reeking of blood and piss (and all things… er.. nice?!), random moaning sounds escaping half-chewed lips.

Meanwhile, in the blue corner, lords Anne Rice’s well-groomed (and well-oiled) frilly-shirted gent, a glass of red wine (or is it blood?! GASP!) nestled in one hand, the works of itinerant dandy, Lord Byron, in the other. A pale and interesting type. Distinguished and cultured, after many years of living dead thespianism. Digging every feckin’ thing his zombie counterpart isn’t…

And it’s not just the beasts themselves that differ. Your average fan of the zombie genre bares little in common with the vamp fan. One likes their fiction (and perhaps their women?!) hard and fast, something akin to Duza’s Dead Bitch Army or Keene’s City Of The Dead. The other might just prefer a more subtle read, something to flick through, gently, while lounging over a four-poster bed… a tightly corseted belle caressing…

(ANYWAY! Where was I?!)

You get the picture, right? Tomatoes, tomatoes, potatoes, potatoes… yaddie, yadda. I’m guessing that only a madman would mix these two bad boys together.

Enter DL Snell. Said madman. His debut novel, Roses Of Blood On Barbwire (Roses of what on who???) published through apocalyptic indie, Permuted Press, shamelessly mixes the sub-genres. Based in a zombie-torn world, DL’s debut novel tells the story of a group of vamps fighting against the ever-growing tide of living dead, struggling to protect and maintain their hapless, human cattle.

And the root of this madness?

‘Richard Matheson’s novel I AM LEGEND. The vampires in that book inspired George Romero’s zombie apocalypse in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, but when I read LEGEND I assumed it was the other way around; I thought it was cool to see zombie-like vampires. Then I thought how cool it would be to pit vampires against zombies. I knew the idea had been done before, but never done well. My hope was to change that’.

To this end, Roses Of Blood On Barbwire Vines (hitherto to be dubbed Roses) describes itself in the inlay as a ‘A Zombie/ Vampire Novel.’

Mind you, if truth be told, the good sir may have got that order the wrong way around…

… You see, for me, Roses is a vamp novel. A Vamp novel, co-starring zombies. The main characters are the vamps, overshadowing by far even our own species. Humanity, briefly introduced in chapter one, is quickly relegated to hapless fodder of heinous (and brutally disturbing) erotic experiments. Meanwhile, vamps, such as main protagonist, Shade, brooding like a female David Boreanaz, and the sharp-tongued, lady’s man, Frost, take a very obvious centre stage presence.

As both reader and writer of the genre, I wasn’t sure this was a wise move for DL. Surely a cast of cold-hearted vamps would present a barrier to character-driven horror? Horror, like Romero’s Dead trilogy, where the all-important ingredient was always humanity? Yet, DL was sticking to his guns:

‘As the main characters, the vampires are vicious antiheroes that mistreat humans, and some readers may not relate to them. So an open mind is key in sympathizing with the characters; the vampires, no matter how monstrous they are, do have human dreams and desires, and I think receptive readers will find a way to relate to them.’

No such luck for the zombies. DL’s shamblers, though delightfully portrayed (their tentacles and shaky walking dubbing them ‘puppets’) are left to wander, for the most part of the novel in the streets outside of the (trad vamp) keep where most of the adults (ie: vamps) do the talking. And gesticulating. And indulgently articulated (naughty DL!) leather-clad foreplay. Sure, the vamps do pull their fingers out of eachother’s pants long enough to machine gun (Underworld, anyone?) the odd zombie off the radar (increasingly so, as the novel progresses) but not enough to warrant much in the way of the ratings for Roses dropping on Goth TV.

DL disagrees, of course. For him these truly unique zombies play a vital role in Roses. He talks of what gives them their unique … er… pulling power; those puppet-string tentacles:

‘Deformities have always engrossed me, so sideshows definitely inspired some of the imagery. As for the tentacles, I really don’t know; they’re Lovecraftian, but I wasn’t familiar with Lovecraft at the time. So I’ll give the default answer: the tentacles were inspired by phalluses.

A question mark may well fall over Roses in terms of its target audience. However, the same can’t be said for its quality. DL Snell is a wordsmith, the likes of which the good Lord Byron, himself, would envy. Every paragraph is drenched in visual intensity, the blood, snot and brains of human, zombie and vamp alike beautifully splashed against the reader’s imagination. Scenes of torture and violence are indulgently dipped in tear-sparkling gore, under no pretence that this is anything short of an extreme horror novel, albeit it elegantly written.

Yet, sometimes it was too much for a simple horror hack, such as I. DL’s words were a little too pretty, at times. So much so that I was beginning to sniff a hint of finery on his horror-heavy breath. Was there more than horror littering DL’s dusty old bookcase?

‘Oh hell yeah… T.S. Eliot, Robinson Jeffers, John Keats. D.H. Lawrence’s novels...’

Roses Of Blood On Barbwire Vines is an excellent debut from a promising horror writer. Its mixing of genres will appeal to many, yet confuse others. Fans of character-driven horror may find the vamps a little two-dimensional (and brutal) to really root for, and, with a shortfall in humans to get your identifiable teeth into (GROAN!), Roses may lose a little of its potency. Yet, for lovers of hardcore horror, with writing as strikingly gorgoues as the book’s lead vixen, DL Snell’s your man. And, thankfully, there’s a LOT more to come from him:

‘I have two novellas slated for publication in a handful of Permuted Press projects: “Mortal Gods” is a zombie story and will appear in HEADSHOT QUARTET, and “Remains” is an apocalypse-by-fire story meant for ELEMENTS OF THE APOCALYPSE. As for novels, John Sunseri and I are working on a free serial novel, PAVLOV’S DOGS, which features werewolves. I’ve got my work cut out for me.’