Tomes of Shadowstalking
Tomes of ShadowstalkingWelcome 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!
The Wamphyri are gone, wiped out in the battle for the Dweller's garden and when the dead in one universe rose up to send weapons of mass destruction through space-time portals to the source world of the vampires. The Wamphyri are gone...or are they? Far to the east beyond the Great Red Waste there is a place where the Wamphyri still exist, and they have ruled their for long and long. Circumstances force renegades westward out of Turgosheim into Olden Starside, where they now begin new attacks on the Travellers that survived the Wamphyri domination. Amid the onslaught, young Nathan Kiklu becomes separated from the life he knew and into a world filled with death and despair. Ready to die, he encounters the dead of the Thyre...and learns to utilize a gift passed down to him from his hell-lander father, the one and only Necroscope! Learning to use it and the telepathy that lies within him, he travels east into the lands of the Wamphyri to learn what he can, only to learn that while the upheaval of his earlier life was terrible, a worse fate waits to embark from Turgosheim: an army of vampires bent on a bloodwar! Can he escape and return to Sunside and the Szgany Lidesci in time to warn them?
Once you get through all the backstory--the Dweller's Garden's battle's aftermath, the truth about Nestor and Nathan's birth, the end (or so they think) of the Wamphyri, and all--the novel moves along at a stable pace, readable and understandable. The author explains things as the book progresses, helping to resurrect events in the original Necroscope books that even recent readers of said books might not easily remember. The history of Shaitan's descent and the ascendancy of himself and his leech fills in gaps that weren't really there to begin with, but it does provide a fitting explanation for the existence of Turgosheim and the unpopular practice of Zolteism whereby some of the Wamphyri abstain from draining their thralls too deeply since the Szgany aren't as robust or plentiful as they once were.
The existence of the Thyre was a surprise. As far as we know from the Necroscope books, there were only three races living in the sourceworld: the humans, the troglodytes, and the Wamphyri, marked by Harry's future doors with blue, green, and red life-lines respectively. The revelation of another race--and a telepathic one at that--was definitely an interesting facet. Their subterranean lives and their importance in assisting Nathan discover who and what he was made for good reading. I especially liked the fact that they were the ones that first started him on numbers and telepathy because it puts him one-up on his father, who only had telepathy when he became Wamphyri.
Book one of the Vampire World trilogy is a stupendous opening for a new chapter of existence and survival in the source world. The lack of some of the original characters--Harry Keogh, Lady Karen, Zek Foener, even Faethor Ferenczy--wasn't a problem, because the incorporation of relatively minor characters from the original books and the new ones occupying center stage helps to mark the passage of time. I'm glad that Harry Keogh and the Dweller appeared so little directly at the beginning and never again. It gave me time to get to know the new Necroscope, Nathan Kiklu, and believe you me: he's a great guy to get to know! Warning: contains some graphic/sexual content.
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