Book Info:
Blood City Rollers by V.P. Anderson & Tatiana Hill (Illustrator)
Genre: Middle Grade Graphic Novel
Publishing Date: April 9, 2024
Synopsis:
Skates on. Fangs out. Let’s roll. This perfectly paranormal graphic novel about a 13-year-old ice skater who embraces the dark side and finds her light when she joins a vampire roller derby team is to die for.
Ice-skater Mina is on a one-track path to Olympic gold and glory—that is, until she totally wipes out at her biggest competition, and is kinda-sorta-kidnapped by undead kids on roller skates. Sucked into the high stakes world of Paranormal Roller Derby, she finds herself “recruited” by a squad of vampires who need a human player to complete their team—just in time to save the league from losing it all.
Between learning to play derby well enough to kick butt on the track, crushing hard on the dreamy team captain, and navigating the spooky rules of the supernatural, how can Mina go from striving to be a ten alone, to becoming one of nine chaotic bodies forming a perfectly-imperfect team? Forget being the best. Will she be enough to help her new friends survive the season?
Book Links:
About VP Anderson:
Veronica Park (VP) Anderson (she/they) is a neurodivergent, queer, feminist millennial writer with a resume that Victor Frankenstein would disown for being “a bit much.” V’s previous job titles include: award-winning community theater actor, professional lecturer on cruise ships, indie film producer, literary agent, and creative project manager; however, “writer” is the title that always fits. V plays competitive flat track roller derby as “Scarlet Five” #55 and prefers the pivot role, aka “surprise jamming.” Born in Alaska and raised in Oregon, she currently lives with her partner in Upstate NY and has two cats named Skeletor and Bo-Catan.
VP Anderson’s Links:
Website: https://vpanderson.com/books/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/veronikaboom/
About Tatiana Hill:
Tatiana Hill (she/her) is a Black and Latina illustrator by day and roller skater by night. Her art journey began simultaneously with her growing love for anime and culminated in a BA in Animation. Receiving an award for Best Art Direction in her end of the year showcase, she would later apply her skill set in color and design to her illustration career. As a member of the Los Angeles roller skate community, Tatiana enjoys participating in a space that celebrates diversity and found family. Her love for this community led to her illustrating The Roller World Tarot Deck and eventually Blood City Rollers, her debut graphic novel as an illustrator.
Tatiana’s Links:
Tour Schedule:
When I saw this Blog Tour for Blood City Rollers I knew that I wanted in as the premise sounded right up my street and I love love Graphic Novels.
VP and Tatiana really did a fab job in creating this wonderful Graphic Novel which was so well put together that the story flowed. I also loved that Mina actually grew as a person and I loved her relationship with Val and hope to see it get stronger.
Yet my favourite thing were the action scenes and seeing what the actual Roller Derby was and it's rules.
Will I be continuing on with the series? and the answer is a big fat Hell Yeah.
For all the above reasons Blood City Rollers gets 4 Stars