Kim Newman

After Victorian England and World War I, the third volume of Newman's Anno Dracula series moves to Rome in 1959 and (for the appended novella) London in 1968. As usual, this installement is crammed full with open and hidden references to all kinds of pop culture, sometimes just barely managing to not bury the story under the avalanche of allusions. It always manages to claw its way out from underneath them however, and both novel and novella remain great fun to read.

They are, however, quite show more different in tone, which I think is due not just to the varying length and different time periods, but also because they both follow quite different templates. The general atmosphere and elements of the basic plot both appear to be based on movies - for Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha that are the over-the-top, extremely artifial horror movies of the Italian Giallo genre of the 70s, in particular those directed by Dario Argento, and for Aquarius another italian film by an Italian director, namely Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni. Some readers seem not to have liked the novella as much as they did the novel, but for my part I am very impressed at how different they are from each other and how Newman manages to adapt to the divergent period styles without being too obtrusive about it - he is actually treading a very fine line here, on the one hand to match his style to the time the stories take place in, and on the other hand to keep the voice of shared protagonist Katie Reed recognisably the same in both texts. It is a testimony to Kim Newman's quality as a writer that he pulls off this balancing act and appears to do so effortlessly.

Overall, this is nothing too deep, but a great yarn that I found very enjoyable to read - not just for the story but also for the way Kim Newman presents and handles it; there is a lot to admire there. I really need to read more by his guy, and branch out to his non-Anno Dracula novels, too. show less

For the first hundred pages, Kim Newman's homage to vampires is little more than a clever but convoluted series of in-jokes, cramming in characters from Bram Stoker's novel and other popular Victorian works of fiction, from Sherlock Holmes to Jekyll and Hyde. Then the plot starts to pick up speed, and two of Newman's best characters - his own - get together.

Charles Beauregard is a secret agent working for a government agency known as the Diogenes Club (Conan Doyle again). Genevieve show more Dieudonne is a centuries old vampire, one of the 'elders' in the new society, who was 'turned' as a sixteen year old girl in Joan of Arc's France. Now, in 1888, Victoria is on the throne, but her prince consort is none other than Count Dracula. Three years after the events of Stoker's novel (retconned to fit with the Ripper murders), Van Helsing and Harker are dead, Godalming and Mina are undead, and Britain is under the control of 'new-born' vampires. A vicious murderer known as 'Silver Knife' or 'Jack the Ripper' is also stalking the streets of Whitechapel, slaying vampire prostitutes. Charles is hired by the head of the Diogenes Club - Professor Moriarty - to track down the killer, and joins forces with Genevieve to better understand his quarry.

*Spoilers?*

The fusing of fact and fiction is cleverly thought out by Newman, offering a workable theory as to the identity of the infamous Ripper - Jack Seward, doctor and rejected suitor in Stoker's Dracula. I'm not really giving away the plot there either, because Seward helpfully dictates his shattered sanity and twisted crimes onto his beloved phonograph throughout the story. The 'cameo' appearances from historical and literary names alike - Lestrade, Lord Ruthven, Doctor Moreau, Oscar Wilde and the Elephant Man - also make sense, for the most part, but Newman does go overboard with his inclusion of every vampire, on page and screen, since Polidori and Le Fanu.

*End spoilers*

What rescued the story for me, binding together the premise, plot, and borrowed cast of characters, was quite simply the interaction between Charles and Genevieve. He is the unflappable British spy, masking his deep grief over the death of his wife with intelligence and diplomacy, and she is the sophisticated, powerful creature of the night who breaks through his defences. Even without the mystery of 'whodunit', Charles and Genevieve kept me reading until the end. Classy Genevieve, the bloated and truly evil Dracula (who isn't merely a misunderstood, lonely old man in Newman's alternative history), and the acquired popular mythology of gothic novels, are what vampire fiction is all about.

Definitely recommended for Dracula devotees, and there are another two novels in the series: Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron is being reprinted in 2012. show less

It might have all begun with Kim's 1994 book The Original Dr. Shade and Other Stories. Or perhaps in the short story 'Clubland Heroes' that appeared in Joe Lansdale's anthology Retro Pulp Tales in 2006 (reprinted in The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club 2007). Or even a vague element of his most recent novel An English Ghost Story. But while all are obviously contributing factors, the heart of the story, as noted in the acknowledgements, is an expansion, or extension, of the 2010 novella show more 'Kentish Glory: The Secret of Drearcliffe Grange School' as published in Mysteries of the Diogenes Club. For longtime Newman fans, this sort of cross pollination is exactly as it should be, and for this reader, the result is an utter delight. For readers not so well grounded in Newman's sort of linked worlds, or an utter newbie to Newman's writing, or even someone coming directly from An English Ghost Story, it may be a slightly baffling read, at least so far as to why he's writing 'Girl's Own' style fantasy adventure in 2015.

This is nothing like the sort of scholastic bait and switch SF philosophizing in a Kazuo Ishiguro-esque Never Let Me Go, vein, nor is it the beautifully horrifying apocalyptic little-girl-done wrong ala Mike Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts (although if you blended those two books with a Ronald Searles 'St. Trinian's' cartoon, or the associated cinematic stylings, you'd be on the right track), instead it is unabashedly pure Grade-A Kim Newman Brit-pulp, with all the usual nods to external influences (Sally Nikola is clearly the spawn of Guy Boothby's Dr. Nikola) and his own previous work (Janice Marsh of 'The Big Fish' makes an appearance, as does Catriona Kaye of numerous Diogenes Club stories). In short, this is a glorious return to Kim Newman's 'Diogenes Club' stories form.

In a spoiler-free nutshell, the plot (it's a superhero origin story of sorts, if you've read the two Diogenes Club stories I mentioned above)revolves around young Amy Thomsett, a girl with an 'Unusual' ability, who is sent off to the Drearcliffe Grange boarding school for girls, shortly after WWI, where she gets caught up in some almost Lovecraftian extra-dimensional hijinx while trying to fit in with her classmates. Sounds simple? Almost YA-like? Well, don't be fooled, it's creepy, funny, and with some downright nasty moments, and it all comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts with Newman nailing the period language and character types perfectly.

As I said, perhaps not the best book to begin with to enter the delights of Kim Newman's vaguely connected worlds, although not the worst either, given that Titan will be reprinting Kim's 'Diogenes Club' stories shortly, it's not the worst place to get on board. Me, I loved it and look forward to more. show less

Take THAT shallow consumerist 90s culture! Also political witch-hunts, fascists and mind vampires! It ain't subtle, but it is clever and it's evocation of a classic film, its writer's life ruined by McCarthy (with the help of the mind vampire) sucking the creativity out of him, and its legacy in the era of cocaine and commodification and exploitation is well-observed. The grimy low-life of Soho, its sleazier upper classes feeding of them, and a literal monster feeding off all of them, it's a show more nasty little horror package wrapped around Newman's version of On The Waterfront and its history. show less