Deliver Us from Evil

Tom Holland is a master of literate historical horror and it is disappointing to see that GoodReads does not seem to include his 1996 book 'Supping With Panthers' which is a wonderful romp through the dark side of late nineteenth century Imperial India.

The five stars are as much for this book as for 'Deliver Us From Evil' which is set in the seventeenth century world of European witchcraft and black magic. He tells a great story and his corpus is a continuing riff on the tropes of Gothic fiction and the horror tradition.

Highly recommended if you like solid story-telling and don't mind a bit of occasional visceral unpleasantness.

Oh dear, its a case of the lights are on but there's no-one at home. The premise of this book is excellent - vampires, the undead, demons and so forth, the court of Charles the Second, and European mysticism - but the execution is dire.

Robert Foxe is a Puritan, only son of a strict but honourable Puritan sheriff: when things start going awry in the village of Woodton, his dad consults John Aubrey [of Aubrey's Brief Lives fame] and leads a posse to the abandoned manor house where bad things are rumoured to happen. But the Commonwealth is on its last legs, the King is returning and Robert Foxe's family is butchered by the townsfolk.

He survives a satanic attack, is fostered by a couple of vampires, works for the blind poet Milton, show more eventually bcomes a member of the Royal Court and befriends the dissolute poet the earl of Rochester, before travelling around Europe in search of a magic book stolen from the Chief Rabbi of Lubek [the one who created the golem] by the Elizabethan necromancer John Dee.

It's all a bit much, disjointed and chaotic, and I battled to finish the wretched thing. Supping with Panthers suffered from the same failure to come anywhere near fulfilling its promise although, as here, the initial plot seemed excellent. I'm afraid I just don't like Tom Holland's writing. show less

Vamps, ghouls, demons, golems, the English Civil War and Lord Byron... all mixed together in a literate yet scary swashbuckling romp.... has to be read to be believed.... over the top most of the way through, but tremendous fun

Robert Foxe is witness to a number of horrible, ritualist killings during the mid-1600s, near the village of Woodton, where his father is sheriff. He witnesses something even more horrible during the fourth killing at Stonehenge, and what the killing summons.Robert is found by two travlers, Milady and Lightborn, the next day, and taken into their care. His quest for vengeance leads him from England to Prague to the New World.I wasn't sure for a bit if this was a vampire novel, or just horror. There are certainly zombielike creatures (yay)! But yes, Milady and Lightborn are vampires (and I figured out who Lightborn really is, but then the clues were there if you know the history) and Robert, well, he's something else. We even learn of show more the beginnings of Vakel Pasha, who has a much larger part to play in Lord of the Dead, which I very highly recommend. The fact there are vampires, though, is nearly incidental since this is Robert's story. I was highly amused by the full story of Milady's tranformation though--should have seen that coming!Excellent book. (Note for those in the US: I had to order this one from Amazon UK--I was already a fan of the author's.) show less

Gave up 200 pages into the book, when it didn't have a real direction yet and the characters still hadn't become interesting.

It's a good premise, but there are so many mysterious things happening that it's just too much. When you don't get even beginnings of explanations after a good third of the story, there's nothing to keep you reading.

Promising but not.