It’s Spooky Season and in the spirit of the season, I want to revisit one of my favorite Indie Novels of the past few years. What better book than the offbeat book The Tome of Apeula. One of the most What You See Is What You Get books with a bit more under the hood than you think.
Authored by Arnold B. Carrerio, it would be easy to dismiss this on sight as a creature feature slasher about a vampire gorilla in the vein of a SyFy Original from the mid-2000s. And while you do get that at times, you also end up getting a book with a surprising amount of depth and story to it.
The book starts in a bit of second person perspective, which takes a minute to get used to about yourself finding the titular Tome in a creepy pet shop and reading into a first-person story written by Apeula himself. Yes, the story is told from Apeula’s perspective and its a joy to behold.
Apeula starts out an ordinary gorilla who encounters and is bitten by a Vampire King. Following the vampire lore that vampires can create thralls under their power, Apeula gets turned into a vampire gorilla and ordered to conquer the jungle and rule over it as his own territory. With his newfound vampire powers comes human-level intellect and thus now you know how he ended up writing the book.
At first, you get a good splatter-fest as Apeula learns his newfound vampire powers and takes on deadly jungles creatures, old ape rivals, and turns monstrous foes into his new thralls. He sets up shop in a cave and starts carving out his kingdom.
If you go into this expecting just a creature feature, you’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised, as I said before. Apeula, as well as being a vampire badass, turns out to be a rather affable fellow—even courteous at times. He’s introspective, curious, and amenable to learning about the human world when it comes into contact with his kingdom. This happens a bit more than you expected, because even though he’s in the middle of the jungle, the Vampire King still sends him his own HR department to help manage things. As interesting as he is to be around, this might be the nicest vampire takeover I’ve ever read.
The book is loaded with fun artwork throughout the chapters that helps highlight the best parts of the book. I highly enjoyed the art and its rare that we get so much in a book, which isn’t terribly long and definitely worth a read. When he’s not managing his thralls or fighting some jungle beast to the bloody death, Apeula’s interactions with aspects of the human world prove to be the best parts of the story.
He’s brought an assistant, who shows him things like movies and literature (which he takes to like a duck to water). Possibly the most interesting is when a Christian missionary is captured and Apeula discovers the concept of religion. Interestingly enough, the presence of Holy materials doesn’t hurt him, bringing some interesting questions about the nature of his vampirism. Apeula doesn’t consider himself evil and, indeed, often his actions aren’t driven by evil. It’s not explored as deeply as it could be, but it was intriguing enough that it spurred more thought than I assumed this fun little book would.
The narrative can sometimes linger on a scene a bit longer than it needs, but not enough to call it bloat. Apeula bounces between antics in his lair with his minions, battling gruesome creatures in bloody fights, and sometimes flashing back to pivotal moments in his life. It never becomes too serious, too droll, or too silly for any one tone to stick. Apeula as a character is the glue that holds the entire concept together and keeps you reading to see just what this big book-reading ape will do next. It hits a different sort of vibe in the Halloween season and this book remains a favorite of mine amongst indie books.
Where else but the indies will you find a book about a book-devouring vampire gorilla that you actually would want to hang out with?
You can grab a copy of Tome of Apeula Here
John A. Douglas is an independently published author and the author of the Age of Adventures fantasy series including its two starter books: The Black Crown and The Lionheart: Icon of Justice.
He can be found every Monday at 7:00pm Central on the Knights Watch livestream with Shadiversity
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