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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Just Finished Reading: The London Vampire Panic by Michael Romkey

At the height of Victorian London the city is threatened by a series of inexplicable deaths. Bodies mysteriously drained of blood leave the police baffled and as the death toll raises so does the panic in the darkened streets. When the word ‘Vampire’ is mentioned the panic reaches new heights. Stung into action the British government form a Special Committee to deal with the situation before the centre of the Empire descends into chaos. But all is not what it at first appears and even some members of the Committee are not what they seem.

As a long time fan of Vampire fiction I was initially somewhat disappointed with this book. Romkey seemed to have more interest in Victorian name dropping than in producing an original vampire tale. That all changed at the half way mark when my complacency (and to be honest expectations about vampire fiction) where summarily blown out of the water by a twist I really didn’t see coming. Suddenly lurching in a whole new direction I soon realised that anything could happen here and I was more than satisfied by the way things turned out. This was certainly an interesting if unconventional addition to vampire mythology but probably not for the traditionalist who might dislike Romkey’s, at times shocking, tampering with the Nosferatu myth.

3 comments:

Paste said...

I do enjoy seeing what you have been reading and often feel that I'd like to try one of them. Question - do you buy these books and have a large book collection and if so where do you get them from, or are they library books in the main?
By the way why only allow 'blogger' comments, it means that I have to use my old login?

CyberKitten said...

Hi Dave. Good to hear from you again.

Yes, I buy my books & do have a HUGE collection. Mostly I buy from Amazon but I do pop into bookshops from time to time as well. I haven't used a library in many years - I always found that I had a better selection of books at home. Even when I was at Cardiff University some years back I probably had an at least equally good selection of books in my library! My tutor thought that was hilarious.

As to only allowing 'Blogger' comments - to be honest I haven't really thought about it. Most of the settings have been left on their defaults from way back when. I'm not happy with allowing anonymous comments though. Is their a setting that I can use to make things easier for you?

BTW - All change for my next book. It's a political thriller set in Russia.

Paste said...

I think that you will find that in your settings if you put it to 'anyone' instead of your current 'registered users' only you will allow bloggers using Wordpress and all the other versions of blogs to comment. This will allow anonymous comments but if this is of concern you could enable comment moderation.