Review of "Ponca City Vampires" by Ethan Richards

Score: 89/100 (8.9 out of 10)

Rats in the hedges, a cello in the dark, a toppled oil baron in stone, and a very old thing that still remembers how to say, “I bid you… welcome.”

That is the vibe of Ponca City Vampires by Ethan Richards: very local, very specific, and surprisingly big in scope. This is small-town supernatural horror where the monsters feel mythic, but the kids feel like real teenagers you could bump into at orchestra practice or the feed store.

The book opens with Cassidy Carlisle, a young activist sneaking onto the neglected, newly privatized Marland Mansion grounds to see what has become of her town’s crown jewel. She finds ivy-choked stone, rumors made real in the form of grotesquely fat rats, and the fallen statue of E. W. Marland streaked with bird droppings and hopeless eyes. Then something puts a hand on her shoulder, calls her “welcome,” and snaps her collarbone so hard the white bone punches through the skin before inhuman fangs dig into it. It is an early signal that this book is not going to flinch away from horror: hokey, cheesy horror which shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Richards's work.

The book does a good job at establishing that something is off and wrong about this town, starting with the way it smells, a clinging mix of decay and stale, old things that never quite go away. It is the scent of damp basements, rotting leaves, and forgotten attics, hanging in the air even on bright days and making every scene feel just a little spoiled. That sensory detail becomes a quiet warning signal, reminding you that beneath the storefronts and school hallways, something rotten is soaking into the town’s foundations.

From there we jump to Henry Harding, a trembling-fingered senior cellist playing at the Marland Grand Home and trying very hard not to have a panic attack in front of his quartet. Henry is anxious, gifted, and trying to earn first chair. He is also secretly training with a kukri in his garage and will eventually decide it is his responsibility to fight whatever is preying on his town.

Alongside Henry we meet Dalia, the unnervingly compelling new girl and cellist who seems wrong from the beginning and turns out to be the Vampire Lord’s “daughter." We meet Sam Garland, a burly AP science kid and part-time pest control tech tracking rat behavior around town. There's Dale Hawkins, Henry’s ROTC, World War II-nerd best friend with the tactical brain and the snark.

Then there's Dr. DeWitt, a chiropractor and horror geek who keeps hearing stories from terrified patients and eventually decides, yes, this really is a vampire pyramid.

The town itself is under siege from every angle: drug cartel La Mosca (by the way, there's a brief mention of Scissor-Tail, the vigilante from the previous book), pipeline security goons from Crown Six, bizarre animal attacks, a decaying landmark sold off in desperation. The kids slowly realize this is not several separate crises but one very old predator using rats, wolves, bats, gangs, and corrupt authority as layers in a control structure.

There's a lot going on in this book, and it's a bit convoluted. One thing that bothered us a bit is how long this book took to get to the actual vampire stuff. We wanted more vampire stuff. We thought that was the main selling point of this book. Instead, we spend a big chunk of the first half in what feels like a pest control procedural, wading through work orders, rat behavior, and pesticide logistics. Yes, we understand that the rat infestation and Sam’s pest control work are thematically and plot-wise connected to the vampires. It is part of the “Pied Piper” riff and it pays off conceptually. Even so, we often found ourselves wishing the book would cut through some of that groundwork and get to the supernatural meat faster, giving us more time with the Vampire Lord, Dalia’s transformation, and the castle-storming horror that the premise seems to promise. It almost seems like the author read a bunch of books, did a bunch of Google searches, and/or watched a whole bunch of documentaries about pest control, then wrote everything he could think of about it. You know, like when an author has done too much research to let it all go to waste?

It really disrupts the flow and the pacing. This is one of those books which we had to keep putting down and summoning the will to pick back up, hoping that the vampire stuff would eventually finally happen.

Despite the promise of so much horror, violence, action, and mystery, we found ourselves really bored with this book. It felt flat.

We can tell that the author at least tried to flesh out these characters.

Henry makes a somewhat compelling anchor for the story, a bundle of nerves and talent who feels painfully real as he bounces between orchestra rehearsals, therapy sessions, and solo kukri practice in the garage. Watching him struggle with anxiety, latch onto Dalia a little too hard, then slowly grow into someone who can stand his ground in a storm drain and a collapsing mansion feels earned rather than forced. Dalia herself is a standout. She is not just the spooky pretty girl with secrets. She is torn in half between blood loyalty to the Vampire Lord and genuine affection for Henry and Ponca City, which is interesting.

Sam, Dale, and Dr. DeWitt round out the core cast in a way we really appreciated. Sam brings the brains and the faith, the kid who can quote AP chemistry and scripture in the same breath while rigging up silver sprinklers. Dale brings the snark and the soldier energy, the one who knows his World War II history and still shows up when it is time to crawl through a storm drain or stand lookout during a gang duel. DeWitt is the rare adult in a YA-adjacent horror story who is not useless. He listens, believes, researches, and bleeds with the kids instead of brushing them off. On the villainous side, the Vampire Lord and his human faces, Varik and Stoner, are genuinely unsettling, and even the criminals like Jules “Sugar Ray” and Napoleon feel more textured than cardboard thugs.

If we have a criticism, it is that there are a lot of side characters swirling around this core ensemble. At times, names and minor players blur together and can be tough to keep straight, especially in the early, more procedural sections. Some of the corporate and cartel figures feel more like chess pieces than fully realized people. Still, the main group is strong enough, and Dalia in particular is memorable enough, that the emotional center holds even when the cast list gets crowded.

There are a few bright lights in this book. For example, we loved the passage:

"Fundamentals. Passion. When those two things came together, hearts were touched. That was what made music different. Science could explain. Religion could inspire. But music could empathize. It could ache with you. There was a whole field dedicated to that truth, music therapy, where people were literally prescribed songs to remind them they were still human. And Mr. Lazenby had not just been teaching the students to perform. He was transforming them from an organization into an organism, shaping them into ambassadors of an art form that could heal the broken."

Overall, Ponca City Vampires feels like a big, ambitious, slightly overstuffed horror novel that almost delivers on its promise of rats, ruins, and vampire royalty. The sense of place is vivid, the core characters are thoughtfully drawn, and the final act with the mansion, the silver rain, and Dalia’s fate is genuinely strong. At the same time, the slog through pest control minutiae, the crowded cast, and the meandering pacing kept dragging us out of the experience. For a book that sells itself on vampires, it spends a surprising amount of time on everything else.

We would still recommend this to readers who enjoy dense, procedural style horror with a strong regional flavor, especially those who like their monsters entangled with real world institutions and infrastructure.

Check it out on Amazon!