London Under Midnight

VAMPIRE SHARKZ
☺ THEY’RE COMING TO GET YOU ☺

This is the mysterious graffiti that is appearing all over town in Simon Clark’s (Vampyrrhic, Vampyrrhic Rites, Blood Crazy, This Rage of Echoes) book London Under Midnight (a play on the title of the classic Lon Chaney movie, I suppose). Ben Ashton is a magazine writer assigned to uncover who is doing the graffiti and why. He gets more than he bargains for as he discovers London is undergoing a plague of vampires, who reach the city underwater from a small island in the Thames. The assignment turns personal for Ben when his unrequited love, April Connor, is attacked by a vampire and disappears.

In Vampyrrhic and Vampyrrhic Rites, Clark gave the vampire story a new twist by incorporating elements of Norse mythology. Here he tries to do the same using the Nigerian trickster god Edshu as the driving force behind the vampires. Edshu, as is explained in endless exposition by an old Nigerian man named Elmo, is doing this to test the city, or someone in it.

I’ve been a fan of Simon Clark for a long time, as you can tell if you read my earlier posts about his books, but this one just didn’t work for me. Although it is a short novel, just over 200 pages, it drags in places, as there are long sequences of conversation or characters thinking about things that don’t really have anything to do with the main story.

There are also plot points that go nowhere, as for example the point that is mentioned over and over that these vampires have sticky hair. You expect that to have something important to do with the story, but it doesn’t, and is never really explained. Most of the characters are also unlikeable. Some things strain credulity, like the fact that hundreds of vampires are making berserker attacks in London each night, but no one but our heroes seems very concerned. I guess London is so deserted, these things pass without notice. I would have expected martial law to be declared.

[SPOILER] The biggest problem is the ending, which is beyond silly. Apparently, all the lead has to do is imagine the problem being resolved and it happens, with all the vampires dissolving, except for the ones he cares about, who are cured. So for vampires, all you need is positive thinking. [END SPOILER]

If you haven’t read Simon Clark, I urge you to do so. He truly is one of the best horror writers working today. But, please, don’t start with London Under Midnight.

This Rage of Echoes

The most recent release of a Simon Clark title from Leisure’s horror imprint is This Rage of Echoes. I’ve previously read Blood Crazy, Darker, and Nailed by the Heart by Clark, and enjoyed them.

The new book has one of the more interesting premises of anything I’ve read recently. The central character, Mason Kantner, is on the run from Echomen, who, if they get close enough to someone, begin to become them. Once they have duplicated them, the new “Echo” turns violent, murders the original, and frequently goes on a rampage. Mason has fallen in with a group dedicated to killing the Echomen, whose existence is unknown to the general population. It is a gripping read, particularly once you start wondering whether the group is really killing Echomen or just ordinary people. Mason himself has his doubts. Some problems I had with the novel, with spoilers contained within, follow:

SPOILERS

Mason exhibits some of the traits of a bad horror movie character. Twice, he leaves the group despite knowing better, with disastrous results. This is the equivalent of when movie teens are trapped in an old house with a serial killer, and one decides to wander off to be alone.
It is established later that only certain people can be duplicated, and Mason himself has the strongest ability to convert someone into an Echo. So why is it so easy to make copies of his sister and mother as well?
After being taken to the compound, the group leader tells Mason how vitally important he is, then leaves him alone, with no questioning and only a mentally-impaired man as protection.
The resolution at the end seems a little too contrived, a little too deus ex machina for me.

END SPOILERS

Despite those complaints, I did enjoy the book immensely, starting and finishing it the same day. I would recommend it, as well as Clark’s other books.

One other observation: There is a jacket blurb from another author saying that Clark may be the next Stephen King. This is the third or fourth book in a row I’ve read with a similar statement somewhere on the cover. I understand why it is done, but come on guys: Everyone can’t be Stephen King.

Vampyrrhic Rites

(Since Vampyrrhic Rites is a sequel to Vampyrrhic, the post below will necessarily contain spoilers. If you plan to read Vampyrrhic, it is advised you skip this one)

At the end of Vampyrrhic, the army of vampires had been defeated, although at a cost. Jack Black was dead, and the remainder of the four who banded together to stop the undead were scattered around England. When the new book opens, David Leppington is practicing medicine in London, while Electra Charnwood is still running the hotel in Yorkshire.

Although all the vampires were presumably destroyed, it turns out there was another group of them, sleeping at the bottom of a deep lake. Years later, they, too, are waking up, and the jaded crew from the first book have to return to the scene to stop them again. And people keep telling them they’ve seen their dead-and-dismembered comrade, Jack Black, walking around town.

Simon Clark is a very good writer, maybe the best British horror writer working today, and this isn’t a bad book. But where the first book made my all-time vampire novel list, this is merely okay. The pacing seems to be off. Once the book starts, readers are waiting for the surviving cast of the first book to return to Leppington, but this doesn’t happen until half way through, and there are other scenes that drag more than they need to. The subplot of the return of David’s schizophrenic girlfriend Katrina serves little purpose but to make the story longer. The returning character of Bernice isn’t given much to do (until the very end), and could have been omitted. And the ending involves a literal deus ex machina.

Despite these flaws, it was a pleasurable read. Clark is a gifted writer, and when things do happen in the book, the scenes are quite gripping. It just seems it was written more because a sequel was profitable, rather than inspired.

Blood Crazy

Blood Crazy was written by Simon Clark and originally published in 2001. It follows the adventures of Nick Aten (is it a coincidence he has the name of one of the Egyptian gods?), a self described slacker in England, after an apocalyptic event. One morning, all the adults go insane and begin to kill everyone under 19. Nick escapes the massacre, and soon joins with the other few survivors. The event is world-wide, and the young people unaffected must attempt to rebuild some semblance of society while protecting themselves from the adults, still mindless, but acting somehow in concert. The biggest parallel to the book is Lord of the Flies, with a generous helping of George Romero, and some of The Stand by Stephen King. There is also a great deal of discourse on Jungian theory, and an interesting though unlikely approach to evolution. Clark does a good job of making you feel the suspense as his characters struggle for survival.

Overall, not a bad book. Clark has gotten better in his more recent work, but there are flashes of true skill here.

Vampyrrhic

At the end of last year, a much-appreciated Christmas present from my Beautiful Wife was a year’s membership in the Cemetery Dance Book Club. For just under $200, counting shipping & handling, you would receive 13 books on a monthly schedule. It sounded and has been a great deal. At the time, BW asked me what I would most like to get through the club. I looked through their list of upcoming titles and said “Either Vampyrrhic or Vampyrrhic Rites by Simon Clark, but it won’t happen. Those will be too popular to be included.” I was pleasantly surprised when Vampyrrhic turned out to be the third selection.

I’ve always thought every horror writer will eventually write a vampire novel. The vampire is just such a staple of the genre, they can’t resist forever. King (Salem’s Lot), McCammon (They Thirst), Garton (Live Girls) and others have all taken their shot at the fanged creatures. The trick of course, is to try to come up with a new take on such a familiar character.

Vampyrrhic eschews all the conventional origins of vampires. It takes place in the smallish English town of Leppington, in the North Yorkshire Moors. Unbeknownst to the current residents, a thousand years earlier, the last of the adherents of the old Norse Gods made a pact with them, in which they would overthrow Christendom at the head of an army of the undead. Due to an accident at the ceremony, the uprising never happened, and the undead were trapped in the ground beneath Leppington. Prophecy stated that a thousand years later, the descendent of the founder of the town, and the guy who was to lead the vampire army, would return, and the undead would come out of the ground. As the novel begins, Dr. David Leppington returns to his namesake town, and guess how long it’s been since the aborted ceremony? That’s right, a thousand years. Before you know it, the sewer-dwelling living corpses are turning the locals into Nosferatu.

Much of the story takes place in a near-deserted hotel, and there are some real chills as the few residents of the hotel hear footsteps in the hallways at night while they remain locked in their rooms. Vampyrrhic, which is also available from Leisure Books as a mass-market paperback, is the talented Simon Clark at his best.

The sequel, Vampyrrhic Rites, will also be featured here in the days to come.