I did not read the first two books in this series, Witchland and Snitchland,but when I was offered the third for review, the premise sounded intriguing enough for consideration.

Set in Hanford, a town plagued by nuclear waste, the first books apparently dealt with topics such as witches, ghosts and whistleblowers. In Twitchland, a sad sack of a nuclear waste cleanup man is bitten by irradiated bats and somehow gains the ability to control all bats in his vicinity and spread the affliction. The bats then bite people, turning them into wasted, zombie-like creatures who can only regain some semblance of normalcy through a highly addictive drug this sad sack/bat master somehow created and has an endless supply of. (That all occurs off the page somewhere.)

When a friend of the neighborhood doughnut shop owner is infected, he calls in his daughter, his best friend and his best friend's daughter to help. They figure things out and solve the problem fairly easily, it seems, all while keeping a sense of humor about them. But did they really fix things? Or, as the last page suggests, will the next book be about radioactive werewolves?

The story is written by Tim Mulligan, who says his books are based "on his own experiences growing up in the real Witchland -- Richland, Washington." Well, you can look up the history of Richland and its connection to the Hanford site of the Manhattan Project during World War II, but I kind of doubt they had ghosts, witches and irradiated bats to contend with there. Maybe I'm wrong, but if so, their Chamber of Commerce needs to start marketing that angle.

The story, unfortunately, is fairly simplistic, with very little character development, minimal plot development and a fairly straightforward, somewhat dull resolution. I don't know, maybe I would have learned more about these characters if I'd read the first two books, it's hard to say based on what I can read here.

Illustrations are by someone who goes only by Pyrink, and the art doesn't really help Mulligan's cause. The artwork isn't great, and much of it is set in darkness or in the bright lights of a nightclub, and in both cases it's very hard to see what's happening.

I appreciate the effort here, but I can't say I'm inspired to explore Hanford any further.