Long ago a powerful and cruel vampire named General Gaskell terrified vampires and humans alike until he was finally killed. But as D approaches the land where he once ruled, odd things begin happening that might have a connection to Gaskell's fondness for playing with other dimensions and his highly advanced weaponry. Looking for an excuse to hang around and see what of Gaskell's technology might be left, D signs on as a bodyguard for a train of supply wagons distributing new medical supplies and farming equipment from the Capital to rural towns on the Frontier. It soon becomes clear that the local troubles aren't random, they are targeted at D. Thanks to a powerful supernatural contract, Gaskell isn't as dead as he once was, and the cost for his return to life is that he and a group of other skilled vampires must kill D.

This storyline is the weakest so far in the series. It started out quite strong, but quickly devolved into a series of repetitive battles and contrived attempts to add length by having characters make illogical and/or out-of-character decisions that require more pages to get back out of. The supporting characters seem to have a lot of potential, but aren't used. The enemy feel like cookie-cutter characters, they aren't fleshed out sufficiently and many lack solid motivation.

Because this plot is so tenuous, Kikuchi seems to collapse back on lengthly descriptions and pointless explanations glorifying D to an extent beyond the normal purple prose of the series. It's adds pages, but shortens the reader's temper. Even in VHD: The Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane I wasn't this annoyed with having to hear about how good-looking D is, and that book involved a serious need for a thesaurus.

It was nice to have a story that involved a few more of the Western elements, although I think they could have been used a bit more to help flesh out the setting.

Had this been a first novel, I would have assumed the writer had more characters and sub-plots than they knew how to use and ended up in over their head. But it is not. In this series alone, Kikuchi has previously shown talent at carefully balancing large casts and long stories. The result is that the books that make up this storyline feel like the author got lazy.

NOTE: In Japan there were 3 books that made up this storyline, but for the English edition the first two were combined, hence the parts 1 & 2 in the subtitle.

Added this book to the Weird Western Bookbox, which is on its way to GoryDetails.

Although not a stellar example of the series, if someone decides to read this series they'll probably want this book.

This book didn't manage to find a new reader in the Weird Western bookbox, and instead came back to me. I'll have to release it somewhere else eventually.

Added this book to the Vampire Bookbox

Took out of emmejo's Vampire Bookbox

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