The Feeding by AJ Ryan

AJ Ryan, also known as Anthony Ryan, is best known for his epic fantasy series such as the steampunk meets dragons Draconis Memoria trilogy or his long running Seven Swords series. As AJ Ryan, he launched himself into post-apocalyptic science fiction territory with the book (that felt more like the narration of a video game) Red River Seven. Ryan has now dipped his toe into a slightly different part of this genre – still post-apocalyptic but this time with vampires – in his new novel The Feeding.

The main character of The Feeding is Layla. Layla lives in an old cinema in the walled remnants of a city called Redoubt. Layla is part of a group of survivors of  an event called “The Feeding” in which vampires rose up and decimated humanity. The survivors live on the scraps and remnants of the previous world. What the survivors can’t find they trade with another, distant settlement. But the journey to that settlement is a fraught one and many die in the crossing, so only the best of the best are chosen and they get to keep some of what they acquire. Layla is determined to join the Crossers so she can access medicines vital to heal Strang, the man who has raised her.

Ryan draws on a wealth of post-apocalyptic and vampire (and post-apocalyptic vampire) narratives to construct his world. The city that Layla lives in is pretty much any post-apocalyptic encampment. The vampires come in three flavours – Alpha, Beta and Gamma, which get increasingly cleverer. There is some implication that the Alphas are the original vampires that have been with us for longer and not necessarily happy with the new normal. And out in the wilderness between the settlements, there are rogue survivors who capture and torture vampires for fun.  All this means that there is very little new or surprising here, even with some of the reveals towards the end (which may well be setting up a sequel) which are very reminiscent of Justin Cronin’s post-apocalyptic vampire series The Passage.

The Feeding is yet another in a long list of post-apocalyptic properties that draw from the same cliched iconography (for example, it will surprise no one that the town meeting takes place in an old football stadium). There is some passable action and plenty of gore but seemingly in service of nothing more than more action and more gore. There are still some creators managing to bring innovative or interesting elements to this genre. In The Feeding it feels like Ryan is just joining dots.

The Feeding by AJ Ryan

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