E-branch: Necroscope Avengers v. 3 Book

With his increasingly popular Necroscope series, Brian Lumley has been slowly and surely fashioning a new genre. He has always, of course, traded in blood-boltered horror of the kind relished by aficionados of the extreme. But alongside the excesses of his narratives, he has proved equally adept at the kind of pungent atmosphere that the great HP Lovecraft specialised in, where nameless horrors too hideous to describe lurk at the peripheries of human experience. But as if that's not enough, he has created a bizarre synthesis of the horror novel and the espionage thriller, with his e-branch sequence a rich goulash of both genres. If all this sounds like a bit of a dog's dinner, it would be difficult to defend the books on the level of careful, well-ordered structure. But who cares? Lumley can always be relied upon to deliver the goods for his growing army of admirers, and Necroscope: Avengers (Vol 3 of the sequence) takes the saga to new heights (or perhaps that should be depths). Again, we're in the company of the monstrous Wamphyri, engaged in a never-ending battle with the human race. After the destruction of the vampire gardens in Australia, London and Greece, three of the hideous regiment (Lord Swart, Malinari and the hag Vavara) have formed an unholy alliance and are cutting a swathe of undead mayhem. They are pursued by the inexorable Ben Trask's e-branch and the dead-waking Jake Carter. If the bloody pyrotechnics of his main plot weren't enough for half a dozen novels, Lumley stirs into his brew several equally ornate subplots: the obstinate Jake is dealing with a major problem of his own in which his blue life thread (emblem of his humanity) is changing to red, with a vampire destiny threatening. And the conflict between Trask's avengers (a motley crew of telepaths, precogs and other misfits) makes success against the undead opponents seem ever more unlikely. As always, the horror set pieces are not for the squeamish: His index fingers extended themselves, projecting deep into the Purser's ears, their knife-like nails slicing their way in through flesh and cartilage - and the eyes that see. Now his thumbs turned purple, vibrating as they elongated and dislodged Galliard's eyeballs, penetrating the soft tissue behind them to sink into the Purser's brain. --Barry ForshawRead More