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Necroscope: Deadspawn by Brian Lumley check out website: www.tor.com and www.brianlumley.com
You push yourself off the top, gather speed, whoop with excitement and you see a mound - one that potentially can launch you into the air and send you screaming into the heights. This was how I thought ‘Necroscope: Deadspawn’ would be...Okay, you finally make it to the mound, take a deep breath in and...
CRACK! The main piece of wood holding your backside off the snow snaps into a million splinters and before your snow-fuelled fun can begin, it's all over! This is how ‘Necroscope: Deadspawn’ was... I shall explain. ‘Necroscope: Deadspawn’ is the fifth in the ‘Necroscope’ series. First seen in our bookshops back in 1991, it has been reprinted for the first time as a hardback edition and it follows the life of the Necroscope, Harry Keogh. He can talk to the dead using his gift of deadspeak, making him a valuable asset when, for example, investigating murders. You get a rundown of what Harry has been through up until this point in the first part of the book, ‘Resume’. It details the background of his fight with the Wamphyri who are the meat behind the vampires and Harry's eventual loss of his deadspeak talent. To get it back, he has to venture into vampire territory and without prior knowledge takes a vampire into his body as its host through its Deadspawn, hence the title! So we come into the story when Harry is realising his new companion is merely in its infancy, but is growing more strongly by the day and before it can take his humanity away completely, Harry must find the brutal killer who uses his gift of deadspeak to torture his victims after he has raped them alive and continued after their final breath. It all sounds a promising mix of parallel universe and intrigue in the serial killer stakes. Soon after reading the first part in which Harry becomes acquainted with the women that have been brutally killed and ‘used’, it all takes a turn for that bump I was telling you about! We head on over to the Icelands of the Wamphyri homeworld, where the overthrown Wamphyri Lords have gone with their tails between their legs. There are others here like them, but they are frozen in the ice. Shiathis, teams up with the other banished Wamphyri, who find previously banished Lords frozen in ice-entombed thrones. What is more, they appear to have been sucked of their bodily fluids, through bore holes to their vampire leeches. What ensues is a game of stealth annihilation, by a highly evolved Wamphyri being. Eventually, Harry realises that his vampire is becoming too strong. He has to make the decision to take a long indefinite vacation to Starside and keep the humans of his home safe from what he is becoming. The writing is pebble-dashed with punctuation. Commas here, there and everywhere detract from the reading experience and make for a style I could never quite feel comfortable with. The language that is used does nothing for the enjoyment and embellishment of the characters and their experiences. I found it very hard to get into the story without feeling overwhelmed by Lumley-nuances. The whole espionage angle filled me with a little dread, I have found in the past that Russian/British/American subterfuge has a way of boring a hole in my head and making my eyes water. ESPers are kind of your ESP/Mutant/Gifted people doing their best to save the world from disaster at the hands of murderers, terrorists and, oh yeah, vampires! They manage to achieve this despite their highly unconvincing dialogue and their long speeches about ‘How-they-are-going-to-deal-with-Vampire-Harry’. The plot seems an unusual one and I have to admit in the vampire novel stakes this is original. There are glimmers of hope throughout the book where style and language don't actually get in the way of telling a really good story. It's just a shame that they were overshadowed by this overall. For example, Harry finally gives into his vampire self and we find him change into his ‘creature’, Lumley's vampires are not just bat-morphic, long-teethed killers. They take on the forms of creatures like wolves, serpents and all manner of in-betweens. Well, when Harry actually gives in, he uses a Mobius door to escape along with a weasel of a character, the mind-flea. Eventually, this mind-flea gets what he deserves and it's a fate worse than death for him. The transformation and atmosphere are captivating. The sex scenes reminded me a lot of those in James Herbert novels which I would have been reading around the time that this book first came out. Although I doubt I ever read about a sex scene quite as ‘penetrating’ as the one between Harry and the Wamphyri, Lady Karen! There are more than ninety-nine ways to screw a vampire and I mean that literally. While I truly believe that it is about time that the Angel/Buffy vampires were swept away with something with a bit more bite and that the Rice-ian Vampires with their tortured existences need some more guts about them, I believe that the ‘Necroscope’ line has a long way to go before it gets there. In some ways, I think part of the reason I failed to enjoy this was because I came to it at the fifth book in the line. Definitely not a stand-alone title! Horror, above any other genre works, extremely well using set pieces and an overall thematic presence. Subconsciously working in the reader's mind so that the impact of the horror not only shocks, but serves to haunt long after the book has been put back on the shelf. In Lumley's style, he takes the idea of showing rather than telling and shoves it out the window. You are told repeatedly, so forcefully of a character's motivations or plans that in the end I felt as though Lumley had rolled up the page and was trying to push it into my brain through my ear canal. Repetitively! Maybe I didn't get it? Maybe I came to the story too late? Maybe time has aged this title unforgivingly? Maybe the ‘Necroscope’ series just isn't for me. Either way, it's different and reprinted in hardcover for those fans who love it so much their paperback copies are falling apart with the love and re-reading of their owners! I'll leave you guys to decide. Donna Jones
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OTHER REVIEWS - July 2004
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Picture
it. The snow has just fallen and you're a kid again. Your sledge
has been holed up in the garage or the shed for nigh on a year,
possibly even two, if snow has been lacking in years gone by. It's
a home-made sledge with metal runners along the curved edges and
you race up the steepest hill in your town. 
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