Among The Immortals [Paperback]

Paul Lake (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1994

A delicious cross between gothic romance and modern thriller, Among the Immortals follows the murder investigation of a college professor. Graduate student Grant Hill suspects the murderer is a vampire and none other than the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, come back to life. The novel satirizes contemporary academia and the writing scene.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not since Ken Russell's film Gothic has so enthuasiastic an eye been cast toward the mythopoetic relationship among the Romantic poets and their role in the evolution of our horrific imagination. As the hero of this lively literary thriller, poet and Berkeley graduate student Derek Hill becomes convinced that a mysterious local patron of the arts is actually the long undead Percy Shelley. Poet Lake ( Another Kind of Travel ) builds a wickedly convincing case as Hill investigates the murder of one of his professors and comes into the possession of letters written by Shelley after his supposed death. Hill researches his thesis in biographical data, in poems, in the OED and over cocktails. The familiar image of the Romantics' sensual lives and fascination with the supernatural takes on a shadowy cast as Hill comes to macabre conclusions about Keats's "Lamia," Byron's corpse and Mary Shelley's fictional reanimation of dead tissue. He sees Shelley's desire to control his own legend as a poet's yearning for immortality taken to its egoistical extreme. Even the simple bloodsucking exchange between art and academia becomes evidence of the parallels between vampirism and a career in poetry. Although the final doppelganger theory doesn't quite track, readers will thrill to the plot's literary intrigue and author's elegant skewering of the dark side of the poetic sensibility.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This literary psychological thriller opens with the murder of a Stanford University professor of English Romantic poetry. Shocked by his mentor's brutal death, Derek Hill, a promising poet with an uncertain future, sets out on a labyrinthine path of discovery. When cryptic manuscripts, possibly written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and alluding to life after death, land in Derek's lap, he finds himself pursued by a bewitchingly beautiful poet and her seductive, enigmatic lover, Julian, whose charm, intellect, and dark ambition appear to control a host of dark forces and the destinies of poets. In dramatic Faustian fashion, Julian tempts Derek with the allure of certain fame in exchange for his soul. Devotees of English literature will delight in this first novel's engaging literary analysis and incisive depiction of ivory tower politics. Recommended for fiction collections.
Sheila Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 301 pages
• Publisher: Story Line Press; 1St Edition edition (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934257736
• ISBN-13: 978-0934257732
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,619,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In the tradition of Byron and Stoker, May 21, 2003

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[e-mail] "[e-mail]" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Among The Immortals (Paperback)

I love vampire literature and movies, and there is quite a lot in that subgenre, but much of it is bad. And I love poetry. And i love literature and literary theory. But to be honest, I didn't expect much out of Paul Lake's novel. It calls itself a _literary_ vampire mystery, which is a bit pretentious (and Lake is known as a critic an poet, not a fiction writer). I thought anything that bills itself as a literary vampire story...well, let's just say I didn't expect much out of it. And pleasantly, I was surprised (though I shouldn't have been, Lake writes well-done and interesting essays, and he has a knack for the narrative poem, so I know he can tell a good story). It's a well written story with believable characters (half the fun is guessing who the characters are in real life--and believe me, you can recognize many of the poets within) and a well thought out plot. It even has a nice twisted surprise ending. The only gripe I have is that Lake spends too much time complaining about the state of contemporary poetry and how our poets are 'treated' (sometimes I got the impression that he only wrote the novel so he could complain about what all poets already know..and already comlain about). Other than that you get an interesting story that blends poetry, criticism, literary history, and vampires into a great novel (had one of the big publishing companies released this book instead of Story Line Press, more people might be familiar with the book, but unfortunately Story Line, great press that it is, has never had the money to set forth much of an advertising or publicity campaign).