Just Finished Reading: Vampyrrhic Rites by Simon Clark (FP: 2003)

Desperate to leave the small Yorkshire town of Leppington 18 year old Dylan Adams is stopped in his tracks after boyhood friend Luke Spencer goes missing. Days later he begins to get strange phone calls, apparently from his friend, asking him to meet in out of the way places late at night. Meanwhile a small group of friends start getting the uncanny feeling that an evil they had fought and apparently defeated three years previously is back and wanting blood – lots of blood. As the sense of dread slowly increases a series of increasingly bizarre and violent incidents appear centred on the lake known as Lazarus Deep, a place full of local legend and one generally shunned by the local population. Until that is a group of local extreme divers try to see just how deep the lake really is and discover exactly what happened to the ruins reputed to exist at the bottom of its jet-black depths. When their lead diver is attacked and seemingly drained of a great deal of blood before making it back to the surface the three friends David, Bernice and Electra finally know what they’re dealing with – Vampires. But this time the vampires have a new leader and he has no intention of going quietly into that dark night. He has much bigger plans and lots of friends to help him….

This was definitely an interesting change from the previous vampire novels I’ve been reading lately. The idea of vampires living at the bottom of a lake (I’m not giving that much away to be fair) is an interesting one, especially as they don’t need to breathe. Actually the vampires in this book are suitably otherworldly and honestly creepy. OK, the reason they’re vampires didn’t make a whole lot of sense but I let that go – mostly. The author did produce an interesting, and mostly reasonably logical, variation on the vampire myth which, with so much history to date is quite something in itself. His characterisation was strong and the whole thing had a decided dreamlike quality about it that I found somewhat difficult to get into but, once inside, found it equally difficult to shake. I did find it a bit slow overall and in consequence it did take me about twice as long to finish it as expected although it is a fairly chunky 504 pages so is not exactly an afternoons read – at least not for me! I think this is the second book in a series which might explain why I had some difficulty getting into it. To be honest, despite enjoying this (though ‘enjoying’ might be the wrong word) I’m not going to spend any great effort finding the other books. I’m not exactly selling this very well am I? I did find it an interesting read and I was intrigued at just exactly where the story was going. I generally liked the characters and found a few of them quite disturbing (and these where the ones still alive!) which impressed me. I did think that the ending was a bit silly, well, actually very silly which did deflate the whole book a bit. Oh, and it annoyed me (as it does on some TV shows) that the survivors, after all they had seen and done, just got on with their lives as if nothing untoward had happened. That never rings true to me. But anyway, an interesting and often creepy read. Recommended for Vampire fans and for those who want a fairly challenging read.