Varney the Vampyre, or, The Feast of Blood {complete}

This isn't a novel it's the equivalent to a 20 season Boxed Set, if the original story ran every week then it went for at least 4 years. Its long, reallll long.
I'm not sure how many writers there were but i'm sure there was more than one. The writing style becomes much less descriptive and over the top around chapter 30 or so much to its detriment.
The story becomes increasingly inconsistent with at least 3 different origin stories for Varney, however it is possible to link everything together with a bit of work and if you assume that the origin stories done after he becomes a vampire (he's not one at the start he's just pretending) are simply due to Varney going a bit mad and misremembering.
The mob scene is probably the highlight of show more the entire run. The middle chapters are probably the weakest with numerous very similar incidents taking place. It gets slightly better towards the end.
I wouldn't bother paying for it to be honest, get a public domain version online, read until after the mob situation or until Varney falls ill and becomes a vampire and then skip to the end. show less

This is called a Penny Dreadful for a reason! It goes on and on, with the author (it seems so disjointed that it seems to be written by several different people) padding the story with totally irrelevant side stories. One is never really sure if Varney is a vampire or not. Yes, he is hard to kill! Bullets don't stop him. Moonlight resurrects him. He doesn't drown. But he doesn't drink any blood during the entire book, despite an attack on virginal Flora, which he later denies. The story ends up in a strange direction, stopping quite suddenly. There is a large portion of the story devoted to finding lost money--it seems vampires need a lot of money.

If your concept of vampires begins and ends with "Twilight," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and Sookie Stackhouse crap, you will not enjoy this book. However, if you enjoy Victorian literature and have the intelligence to appreciate the wit in this Penny Dreadful, you will have a rollicking good read. Yes, the plot can be convoluted (and long winded) at times, but that comes with the territory of the mid-19th century English serialized novel -- Dickens, anyone?

Was worth reading for historical curiosity, but the period and original serial release apparently conspired to produce a word count that could have been profitably halved, and I'm usually not an impatient reader.

Only got to the end of Vol. 1