I saw on the author’s social media somewhere that Drew Hayes’ Fred the Vampire Accountant series has one final volume due out after the one I had on my shelf, making Posthumous Education (Fred #8) the penultimate installation. It definitely shows; there is a lot of set up. Fred is called on a favor picked up about 5 volumes ago to a Fey queen, and all she wants him to do is take a temporary teaching job at the local parahuman institution of higher education, teaching what I’m going to call “human studies”. Nominally, it’s because the queen has a relative enrolled she wants to get the right knowledge, and being Fey, she’s probably got something else up her sleeve too. Fred doesn’t mind this idea, except that how’s he going to manage his growing accounting business and being the head of a vampire clan, as well as his new teaching duties? Answer: the Fey version of a Time Turner.
A lot of what follows is Fred’s usual fish-out of water experience, as he has to get used to students who were probably born parahuman unlike himself, learn how things work including homecoming (aka prank) week, deal with the eye-rolls and smug know it alls in class, figure out what’s going on with certain students, etc. The first adventure as a class is for me the worst as it’s everyone getting somehow blasted into a scary and threatening realm and they have to first find each other and then get back to their own world. This takes way too long. Granted, in hindsight, it’s probably set up for the set up. Fred needs to get a mysterious object in this realm, see it nearly destroyed, get some potential help about what’s left from the Blood Council on dealing with it, and then….. The other major thread is that Quinn’s back in the picture. Fred spends a lot of time worrying about that, and when it finally happens, there’s tragedy past and present involved.
A few key other figures make brief appearances, Krystal getting the most page time as we get a little more detail about her demon powers, and we even get a little hint at Arch’s back story.
This is entertaining, as Hayes’ work usually is, but it’s light on story. Had I not already known this was the second to last volume, that would have bothered me a lot more, since I knew going in that this is setting up the series finale.