Uncover the Secrets of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Certain Dark Things

Neika: An interesting take on the different kinds of vampires. What a story it was. This book gave me underworld vibes just a little (Selene & Micheal) ATL & Domingino. I don't know what I was expecting out of this story 😳. A very twisted kind of story, the ending was bittersweet.

United States on Dec 05, 2023

Sammantha: I am so glad I finally read this book! This noir crime vampire novel based in Mexico City was a unique take on vampires and I truly enjoyed it. More so the more I think on it. Also, I’m obsessed with this neon noir cover! 🖤

I actually listened to the audiobook while following along and I think it made it that much better of an experience for me with the narrator’s accent. We have a vampire on the run Atl, and a 17 year old street kid and garbage collector, Domingo who happens to run into her one day. An unlikely meeting turns into a favor which turns into a friendship. In this alternate reality of Mexico City, vampires are not aloud. However, outside of the city we have many subspecies of vampires which I loved. Atl is on the run and trying to get out of Mexico City with the help of Domingo, and while vampires are not aloud in the city, does not mean they aren’t there. Much like gangs and drug cartel, we have human gangs and vampires throughout to halt their escape.

We have some mystery as to who is behind a humans death, and why Atl is on the run which come to light throughout but I heard someone mention this story is very much a character study and I...

United States on Sep 14, 2023

Mrs Rhiannon C Gordon: I love books by this author. I really enjoyed this but felt the last few pages could have been expanded. It was as though a door had been slammed in my face when I wanted to hear more.

United Kingdom on Sep 10, 2023

Kindle Customer: First book read by the author. Fantastic. It was dark, alluring, fast paced. Exactly what I wanted!

United Kingdom on Oct 22, 2022

V. O'Regan: “Just one more, he thought. Just that blasted girl. How long can she run, anyway?” - Rodrigo, ‘Certain Dark Things’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

I had also preordered its unabridged audiobook edition, narrated by Aida Reluzco, and combined for an immersive experience.

‘Certain Dark Things’ was Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s second novel, initially published in 2016. It quickly went out of print and became a much sought-after item. So, this new, updated edition has been highly anticipated.

It is a vampire novel set in an alternative Mexico (and indeed a world) in which vampires are very much ‘out of the coffin’. Silvia Moreno-Garcia describes it as a violent, gritty neo-noir, which is told from multiple points of view.

So, in this reimagined world vampires were identified as real in 1967 and in the following years governments began either deporting vampires or setting out ‘vampire free’ and ‘vampire occupied’ zones. Mexico City is one such vampire-free zone. That doesn’t mean that there are no vampires there but they have to remain in the shadows and avoid detection.

Early in the novel Domingo, a 17-year-old street boy, meets the...

United Kingdom on Sep 12, 2021

sjhigbee: Moreno-Garcia is superb at getting under the skin of her characters and making you care, even when they aren’t very likeable. Atl is entitled and spoilt – a fact even she acknowledges. She has done terrible things – and yet, like Domingo, I was smitten. I really wanted her to succeed in fleeing Mexico City without be executed by the police, or worse still – fall into the hands of a sadistic young vampire, who has a very valid reason for wanting to torture her. As her story unfolds, along with Domingo’s own life as a street kid, I found myself inhabiting the smelly hideout and eking out a precarious existence, while constantly harried by the inescapable hunger for blood.

I mostly read SFF, so while it isn’t my go-to genre, I’ve read one or three books featuring vampires. This is the one that best depicts their otherness, the differing races, differing customs and what drives them. It clearly lays bare their sense of entitlement and utter lack of humanity, while demonstrating their dangerous ability to mimic those emotions in order to influence the humans around them. I could see all that – and yet I still wanted Atl to prevail. And as for Domingo… sweet,...

United Kingdom on Feb 13, 2019

Alexa O: Certain Dark Things is a great case for making big worlds into little stories. I don't say that to belittle Moreno-Garcia's novel, this story is not small in a bad way, but it is tight and rather simple. And yet behind it is some pretty sophisticated world building.

Moreno-Garcia alternate universe is one where vampires have been out of the coffin (as Charlaine Harris would say) for fifty or sixty years. Humanity has done its best to create vampire free zones without antagonizing their superiors on the food chain (this did made me think quite a bit about how you manage a society where one group of people needs to eat the other to live), and one of those supposedly safe places is Mexico City. This is where the young vampire Atl runs when her vampire-narco clan is wiped out by a rival cartel. There, she runs into Domingo, a naive but charming street kid who decides to help her get out of the city while the Necros, the police and Mexico City's cartels are trying to kill her.

Domingo is a refreshing main character in many ways. I always appreciate it when a writer creates a character that isn't smart. A character doesn't have to be brilliant, or even particularly wise to...

United States on May 24, 2018

Jess Gofton: Certain Dark Things has probably been my most anticipated read of 2016 after I adored Silvia Moreno-Garcia's 2015 debut, Signal to Noise, to the high heavens. If you've been following my blog for a while you're probably sick of me talking about it. With Certain Dark Things not being released until October I was waiting impatiently for it until it happened to pop up on NetGalley and I was lucky enough to receive an eARC four months early. Naturally, I started reading it immediately.

And? I really liked it. Like, a lot.

After loving Signal to Noise as much as I did (and still do) one of the things I was most excited about was Moreno-Garcia's take on vampires, and I'm so pleased to say she did exactly what she hoped I would: she took existing tropes, played around with them a little, and created something completely, wonderfully different. She weaves vampirism into Mexican folklore and Aztec history so brilliantly, creating several different subspecies of vampire in the process.

One of these vampires is our heroine, Atl, who fills me with joy. Atl is more of an anti-heroine than a heroine, the kind of protagonist I feel as though I've rarely seen without a penis....

United Kingdom on Dec 04, 2016