The Graves of Saints by Christopher Golden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Caveat: I'm rating this on pure, bloody-minded awe at the epic action. Golden writes great comics, too, and one especially grand Hellboy, not to mention X-men, but long before I read him in those, this series was synonymous with OMG THIS IS AMAZING, with unlimited special effects included.

Does it match the original Final Battle between the forces of the Mages in the Vatican VS the unbound Vampires who were enslaved by the Catholic Church in the distant past? Uh, maybe? I mean, we're opening up the sites of saints in the catacombs of the most famous churches to gateways to hell and hoards pouring out of them. Peter, a vampire turned human and becoming an OVERPOWERED mage thanks to his 1000 years trapped and tortured in hell, stands between massive multiple incursions into our world. Not just hell, but all kinds of nasty pantheons and multiple dimensional nasties who now see the Earth as fresh meat. :) The corrupt and evil Vatican powers HAD been the last bulwark against that, but after they brought demons to rampage across the Earth to fight the vampires, their cred was blown. :)

And now? This is a ramped-up mop-up action with coalitions and mages of both infernal land Gaia magic doing all they can to stem the tide of hungry monsters.

This is NOT your average UF. This is a UF on speed and PCP and cocaine with a budget of a billion and a half dollars, adding truly horrific and nasty elements in upon the ultimate heroism and tragedies playing out all over the place.

Can I say wow?

Now the bad bits. The good bits WAY OUTWEIGH the bad. But the bad is the neverending dead girls, the slightly one-dimensional portrayals lost in the huge and delightful action, and the use of the dead girls to pull off more Refrigerator scenes. They work, and I was affected by this one, but damn... in that respect, it's just like a comic, too. And in a bad way.

That being said, I'm still IN LOVE with this series. :)

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