Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story by Anne Rice and Ashley Marie Witter, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story (Headline, hb, c.224pp) is adapted from the relevant parts of the novel by Anne Rice, and she is listed as the author, but this book seems to be essentially the work of Ashley Marie Witter. Memorably played by a creepy young Kirsten Dunst in the film adaptation, Claudia was turned as a child, and is cursed to remain a child forever, causing her much frustration and angst; she will never be a woman.

This graphic novel charts the course of her dismay; it begins with her eyes opening, ends with them closing. We see her waking from near death and being turned, her first hungry feeds, her efforts to escape with Louis from their mutual maker, Lestat, and her tragic fate in the Paris sunshine.

Well, tragic-ish – she is a serial killer! But without her desperate desire to grow up, she and Louis would have stayed away from Europe, and would not have fallen into the orbit of the more powerful, older vampires.

This story isn’t without interest, looking at the unusual familial relationships that might develop among vampires not bound by our social considerations. Lestat and Louis are all at once father and son, lovers, brothers, friends and enemies, and fathers to Claudia, the baby they had to save the relationship.

In the emotional manipulations of Lestat the book shows how a dominant vampire might exert his will over others, something often taken for granted or demonstrated through violence in such stories; he’s an abusive father, a domineering mother and a bad uncle, all in the body of a moody pop star.

As the relationship between Louis and Claudia, following their escape from Lestat, shades into a love affair between an adult and a child, it all feels uncomfortably icky. We learn eventually that they don’t have a physical relationship, but in Paris they are said to be “in love”, and there’s a fair bit of nuzzling and sweet talk. It’s a book about an abused child who is upset because a grown-up won’t abuse her some more; it’s unnecessary to explain why that didn’t appeal.

The manga-romance-style artwork plays into that theme, but is generally quite good, even if there’s not a lot to distinguish one pretty boy vampire from another. However, the colouring, a few shades of greeny-beige with splashes of red when required, makes the book look rather samey and unappetising, while the text, typeset in an unsympathetic font rather than properly lettered, and all in italicised sentence case, makes the dialogue and captions a trial to read. Recommended only for fans.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller - reviewed by John Greenwood

In the world of The Dog Stars, humanity has been decimated by a combination of killer flu and a HIV-like blood disease, with only zero point something of the population surviving the apocalypse. The survivors, at least in the USA where the novel is set, can be divided into isolated homesteaders and marauding bands of scavengers. Amateur Cessna pilot Hig is one of the former, and together with his gun-obsessive friend Bangley, he defends a tiny rural airport against any feral remnants of humanity who make it over the mountain. Together they make an effective, if inharmonious team. Hig can't stomach the killing, and Bangley the ruthless tactician cannot secure their perimeter without regular flights to check for intruders approaching their borders. But after nine years of this successful strategy, Hig suffers a shock that leads him to follow a faint transmission from another airport situated beyond his fuel supply's point of no return.

The Dog Stars isn't as big a book as it first appears. There's an unusually large amount of white space spread across its pages. A whole line between each short paragraph and between each line of dialogue means that many pages contain less than 100 words. At first this led me to wonder whether it was a deliberate attempt to express the silence and emptiness of the post-human American wilderness, the way Aaron Copland removed the middle notes from his chords to evoke the wide open spaces of the frontier years. More prosaically, it might simply be that readers in the era of Twitter are growing more intolerant of large, dense blocks of text, combined with the cheapness of paper, and steadily growing expectations of what is a normal novel length.

The other stylistic quirk that jumps out is Heller's tendency to truncate and de-punctuate, so that we get sentences such as "My memory serves but not stellar ha", or simply "And" or "Then" followed by a full stop. Once I clicked with the vernacular rhythm, it felt like listening to a good raconteur who is speaking between swigs of beer at a bar, or more likely trying to concentrate on doing something else (like flying a Cessna airplane) while breaking off every now and then to continue the narrative. Hig's is a very engaging voice, and only in the final third of the book, when he and the female lead character reveal something of their back stories to one another, does the tone lose its tautness and drive, and begins to sound like the sort of monologue delivered onscreen as Oscar-bait.

The pace shifts gears efficiently between meditations on Hig's past during his hunting and fishing trips into the mountain, and grisly skirmishes in which Hig and Bangley fight off poorly-armed but well-motivated desperadoes, Bangley's tactical perfectionism means that the author can ratchet up the tension in these fight sequences, as they are first rehearsed in exquisite technical detail, then enacted in far more chaotic and nerve-jangling fire fights.

Bangley is a fascinating character in his own right - a humourless, merciless survivalist whose day has finally come. His motto is the Hank Williams Jr. song title "A Country Boy Can Survive", and it is his ilk who inherit the earth once the plague has swept the last vestiges of civilisation away. Hig's reflective, impulsive, almost flaky character is a liability for them both. Although far from preachy, The Dog Stars is a novel which opposes two world views. Bangley will always prevail, but as he litters the airport perimeter with corpses, he can ultimately only grow more alone. Hig is not a competent survivor: he loses concentration and hankers after the old days. But it takes a foolish mistake on his part and an admission of his own vulnerability to establish the possibility that communities might again develop between the few atomised individuals left alive.

In the last third of the novel, I began to see the plot rolling out ahead of me according to the standard Hollywood model of redemption, but for the most part this is a well-written, highly entertaining and serious-minded take on the end of the world, and it deserves to do well.

 The Dog Stars by Peter Heller is published by Headline Review on 7th August 2012. ISBN 978-0755392599. Hardback, 320pp.

The Bride That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs – reviewed by Michael W. Thomas

The Bride That Time Forgot belongs in a long, honourable tradition. Doom-laden goings on can be engrossing in themselves, but even more so, often, when placed right in the middle of the mundane. Both worlds can gain immeasurably by the interaction. Elm Street is a perfect harbour for nightmares precisely because of its picket-fenced babysitter schedules. Several of Wells’ scientific romances draw the reader in because the scene of the action isn’t Planet XG499 but Bromley or Lewisham, because key characters are less likely to bark anxieties about a wayward flux capacitor, more likely to gasp “Blimey” and “Strewth”.

Paul Magrs’ latest novel draws together the known and the feared in just this way. The setting is Whitby, the very name brimming with connotations of the undead, of Stoker, ghastly shipwreck, swaying coffins. But its narrator is Brenda, owner of a bijou little B&B, “open for business and filled up for fifty-two weeks of the year”. As the novel progresses, Magrs’ Whitby itself fills up, with characters from this side of the life-death line, characters from the other, and characters with one foot in the light, one in the dark. This last category includes Brenda herself, who is given to drop little teases about her various adventures into the twilight zone, in between plumping guests’ pillows and getting in extra stocks of shower gel. We meet her friend Effie, sometime co-sleuth in her perilous adventures but now besotted with the sinister (and blood-hungry) Alucard; Robert, manager of the Hotel Miramar, who is set (in his own mind, anyway) to take Effie’s place on Brenda’s dark excursions; Marjory Staynes, proprietress of the Spooky Finger bookshop – and, through her, the (to Brenda, at least) disturbingly hovering presence of novelist Beatrice Mapp – and, through her, the Warrior Queen of Qab.

The ingredients, then, are all there for what other reviewers have noted as a glorious collision between Alan Bennett and The League of Gentlemen in Magrs’ work. Sadly, they don’t quite cohere. Strands are woven, hares set running. Brenda drops her hints that she isn’t a mere inhabitant of the daily round, thank you very much: her past is filled with to-dos in the unknown. After a certain point, however, a novel has to declare its hand: particular hints have to be taken up, confidently run with. Similarly, characters come onstage at a brisk rate, but it isn’t always easy to determine their relative importance to Brenda or each other – even when she seems to make it clear (which is a rather curious consequence in a piece of fiction). Overall, though there are bravura passages and some sense of climax and denouement, the narrative somehow doesn’t seem to know, at least not consistently, how it wants to be significant.

The reader can also be wrong-footed by inadvertent time-slips. At one point, Brenda heads for the Miramar Hotel on a quest to learn more about the life and works of Beatrice Mapp. She finds what she wants through the good offices of her friend Penny and the hotel internet. We are left in no doubt that it’s evening: a Sixties Night is in full swing, the soundtrack including “’Paper Sun’ by the Small Faces” (Traffic, in our world). Brenda asks Penny if she’ll bring the Beatrice Mapp information to the B&B:

“Penny nods readily. ‘Yes, of course. And Robert and I are both free tonight.’
‘Very good. Seven o’clock. I think I’ll give Effie a ring.’”

Immediately we wonder if this conversation is taking place much earlier. Or perhaps “Sixties Night” is being used as a generic term for all-day frivolity. But no – Brenda is clear on the point: “Sunday evening I’m full of purpose and directing my feet towards the Miramar Hotel.” It’s very tempting to say Such slips wouldn’t matter if…. But they do matter, and their occurrence raises questions about degree of structure and control in a whole narrative.

There is indeed entertainment to be had found in The Bride That Time Forgot, as well as some memorable characters (Gila, the loin-clothed scourge of vampires, comes to mind). That said, more tightening and polish – another go-round with the awful but vital blue pencil – would have guaranteed its appeal from start to finish.

The Bride That Time Forgot, by Paul Magrs. Headline Review, pb, 342pp.

Johannes Cabal the Detective, Jonathan L. Howard

Count Marechal would see the Mirkarvian empire restored, but the emperor died three hours ago – before a crucial speech could be given. Thus Johannes Cabal escapes execution for necromancy (and related book theft), but the episode ends badly, and Cabal escapes on an aeroship – the Princess Hortense, on her maiden cruise – in the guise of Herr Gerhard Meissner, docket clerk first class, Department of Administrative Coordination. There are murders; Cabal investigates.

This was very enjoyable. Both narrator and character are quietly funny, and there's a touch of the Stainless Steel Rat about Johannes, both in his humour and his disdain for the law (and at one point it is said of him that you should "set a monster to catch a monster"), though he does not share his science fictional counterpart's regard for human life – having defeated an enemy, he thinks it best to kill them while they are "handy and vulnerable".

Nor does he share the Rat's interest in women. Indeed, he "usually carried a faint scent of formaldehyde around with him, which had the effect of depressing any amorous intent of any woman with a working nose", so the attention he attracts from femmes fatales during the voyage (enforced absence from his laboratory having done much for his odour) comes as a surprise and a challenge.

There are also echoes of Keith Laumer's Retief tales: Cabal is a capable man on a world of militaristic idiots, sadists and popinjays, a world with one foot stuck in the 19th century. Unlike Retief, Cabal has a capable, intelligent woman to deal with: Leonie Barrow, a criminologist from his past with the uncanny, infuriating ability to awaken his "feelings" and "conscience". Their uneasy unfriendship provides many of the novel's best moments.

Special mention must go to the wonderful cover, a striking piece of art and design by Michael Windsor. The back cover reproduces the first three paragraphs of the novel, showing a classy and I think justified confidence in the author's writing, which is sparky, amusing and dramatic.

The last thirty pages of the book offer a bonus feature: "The Tomb of Umtak Ktharl", an entertaining novella which succeeds the events of the novel.

Johannes Cabal the Detective, Jonathan L. Howard, Headline, hb, 380pp.

Flirt, by Laurell K. Hamilton

Anita Blake is a lady with a lot of barnacles. She's accumulated many powers in her previous seventeen books, and to a new reader their page-by-page introduction in this one seemed almost ludicrous. Vampire hunter, necromancer, werewolf (sort of) (and were-lots of other things), vampire, another vampire's human servant (and girlfriend), and succubus, she keeps a pet were-leopard and werewolf, and she's a US Marshal.

But imagine reading your first Superman comic: okay, this guy can fly. Oh, and he's super-strong, invulnerable, and shoots lasers out of his eyes. Plus, he has super-hearing, and he's a super-ventriloquist, and even a super-kisser! We're so used to Superman that we hardly question it. What matters is how all the powers coalesce into a character. What's interesting about Anita's powers is that none are free: with each comes new dangers, new feelings, and new responsibilities. She's in constant danger of being overwhelmed by them.

With great power also comes great difficulty in plotting: how to challenge the hero who has everything? In Flirt we see Superman's worst nightmare: friends targeted by supervillains. Mr Bennington wants his wife back from the dead, and doesn't care who dies to make it happen. With snipers stalking her lovers Anita lets herself be kidnapped by a pair of mercenary were-lions. A were-lion witch cuts her psychic connection with her chums, and things are looking grim. But the bad guys have reckoned without Anita's greatest power of all: her ravenous sexual energy!

A few chapters in and this was well on the way to being one of the worst books I'd read in years. The second chapter is dreadful, the banter excruciating as Anita and her gaggle of boyfriends flirt with a waiter and each other in a restaurant. The tone felt familiar - jaunty, forced, creepy - and it took a while to place it: late period Heinlein. Discovering in the afterword that the scene was based on real events made it even worse. What these characters call "playing", other people might well call sexual harassment.

But once Anita's love cult is sidelined the book got much, much better. It develops into an interesting sexual thriller, Anita's respectful kidnappers fighting their own desire to mate with her, and pack dynamics play out in human form as she plays them off against each other. Overall, this is a crisp, pointed novel that doesn't outstay its welcome, and if I could forget that indulgent second chapter I'd be happy to read another in the series, preferably one in which Anita is once again separated from her gormless gang of group-huggers.

Flirt, by Laurell K. Hamilton, Headline, pb, 180pp.

Also published this week: the 19th Anita Blake novel, Bullet, in which Anita must face the Mother of All Darkness, who is after her body... Though not for the reason everyone else is.

The Cult of Osiris, by Andy McDermott

Nina Wilde, all-action archaeologist, has put away her pony-tail following the pyrrhic conclusion of a previous adventure and languishes in professional disgrace. Her ex-SAS husband Eddie Chase, a balding Yorkshireman with a weak line in post-kill puns, makes ends meet as a bodyguard to the stars. Things are slow, but soon they'll run into Macy Sharif, "a broomstick with two watermelons taped to it". She knows the secret of the Sphinx and the evil international cult of Osiris is after her.

What to say about a book that features a thirty-page car chase through central New York? If that doesn't sound good, this isn't the book for you! This is an action movie in paper form, more National Treasure than the Da Vinci Code, and it delivers on its promise. McDermott's very good keeping things moving while keeping them clear, always a tough balance to strike in describing action sequences. The fantasy elements are minor, so in that sense it may not be of huge interest to BFS members (for whom this review was originally written), and it's not challenging, or deep, or original, but unlike its vicious but incompetent bad guys it hits nearly all its targets.

The banter is rather clunky and centres too often on Macy's breasts, but the book is fast-moving, hopping from New York to Giza in the turn of a page, tremendously exciting, and satisfyingly brutal to its villains. It wears its influences on its sleeves, with Bond, Lara Croft and Indiana Jones all getting namechecks, and is in general rather sweet-natured: the leads are very much in love, and, just like in The A-Team, innocents usually get time to crawl to safety before anything explodes. And lots of things explode: McDermott uses every dollar of a book's unlimited budget for pyrotechnics.

The book ends with a thirty-page preview of the next in the series, which promises more of the same.

The Cult of Osiris, Andy McDermott, Headline, pb, 500pp.

Hell's Belles, by Paul Magrs – reviewed

Brenda is on her honeymoon – she is now the Bride of Frankenstein (or at least his monster) in fact as well as name – and in her absence dark things begin to stir around the Whitby hellmouth. A cursed film, one whose every copy has supposedly been destroyed, is to be remade with its original star, the devastatingly attractive scream queen, Karla Sorenson. In Brenda's absence best friend Effryggia tries to hold the fort, but Robert is being kept up all night by a mysterious gentleman and new girl Penny is thrown into a temporary coma after finding a DVD of the original film in a charity shop.

After the brainspasms brought on by Magrs' brilliant Doctor Who novels like The Scarlet Empress, The Blue Angel and Mad Dogs and Englishmen, this was disappointingly lightweight and conventional, but not a bad book for all that. The short chapters made for an easy, unchallenging read, and it's clearly written as a commercial piece; from the cover one aimed squarely at the chick lit market. Its many revelations and reunions would have more impact on readers of the first three books; new to the series, I was left largely unmoved. It left me wanting to watch the Universal horror movies again, but ambivalent about reading another in this series.

Headline, tpb, 440pp.