Tomes of Shadowstalking

Welcome to the land of shadows, where evil is the greatest power, where nightfall marks the birth of terror, where your very soul is at risk. Join me as I investigate worlds filled with black magic and dark souls and encounter the monsters rule these wicked places.

This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

During the years of the French Revolution, a recently awakened vampire plots to settle an old score with his brother, the man--so to speak--that put him in the dirt in the first place. He nearly succeeds, but the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin inadvertently interfered, saving the man who would become an old friend of the Southerland family. That man, Philip Radcliffe, becomes the new target of the vengeful vampire, and it's up to Vlad Dracula to repay the debt. He succeeds in tricking his brother, Radu, into believing he had succeeded in his vendetta. Now, in the present, Radu has discovered the truth and is bent on bestowing on the descendant--also named Philip Radcliffe--the fate intended for his ancestor. Can the mysterious Mr. Graves stop his brother in time?

Radu first appeared--however briefly--in The Holmes-Dracula Files as a possible reason for the link between Sherlock Holmes and Vlad Dracula. Now he has a more dominant role, and the reader learns more about the antagonism between the two brothers as well as why Radu was also called "the Handsome". For a long time fan of Dracula, the revelation of this tale--however accurate or inaccurate it may be--still provides an insight into the Radu that appears so often in other Dracula-related texts. There might be a certain...er...discomfort when dealing with Radu's appetites and proclivities, but even this disappears once you focus on the main plot: Radu's vendetta against Philip Radcliffe and it's relatively small part in the overall vendetta against Dracula.

No problems with the reintroduction of some older characters. Joe Keogh and John Southerland are back. Both are older, which adds a sense of progression to these novels, despite how often the story jumps into the past. Constantia, a.k.a. "Connie", returns as well. Remember her from A Matter of Taste? She isn't a throw-away character, either, since it's probably just as well that there are two vampires going against the one, right? We don't get to see the summoning ritual that appeared so prevalently in An Old Friend of the Family and Seance for a Vampire, but we do get to witness certain other not-so-mundane instances, such as the "ward" that Dracula bestows upon a young girl he rescues.

The historic figures that pop-up here and there--Napoleon, the Marquis de Sade, Thomas Paine, Robespierre, etc.--make for an interesting story, but the real action is in the conflict between Dracula and his brother, with a mere mortal's life hanging in the balance! Saberhagen once again mixes history with fiction to produce a highly believable--however fictitious--horror novel.

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