Ancestral Hungers [Hardcover]

Scott Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1995

Young David Bathory, heir to the vampire throne, returns to his ancestral home with two choices: either claim his birthright at the cost of his immortal soul--or suffer the immediate torments of hell. It's Hades one way or the other.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Baker (Webs) attempts a fresh spin on the vampire tale in this involved novel, but his effort bogs down in an overstuffed plot and clumsy dialogue. David Bathory, 29, leads an uneventful life as a dealer of snakes and drugs. But after his wife is killed, he begins to rediscover his roots, which he learns are steeped in vampire ancestry. After meeting a mysterious woman named Dara, David quickly becomes engaged in a power struggle between his vampiric ancestors and his present-day family, realizing that he himself is a "dhampire"?a human able to control undead ancestors. The author introduces too much arcane material throughout the narrative, and his convoluted story line, involving Indian snake legends, incest, Satanism, medieval torture devices and various demons, proves difficult to follow. Only vampire aficionados will want to venture into this novel, which, like its pale heroes, is a grim reworking of a dead ancestor: Baker's out-of-print 1982 novel, Dhampire.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

When his career as a drug smuggler comes to an abrupt halt, David Bathory reluctantly returns to the claustrophobic family he has spent most of his life trying to escape. There he discovers the infernal heritage of his ancestors and realizes that, despite his best efforts, he must enter into a dark world of vampiric intrigue if he hopes to survive. The author's revision of his earlier novel Dhampire (1982) employs an amorphous mixture of Eastern and Western vampire legendry liberally dosed with scenes of graphic violence and explicit sex. Weak plotting and unlikable characters limit this novel's appeal to hard-core fans of blood and gore.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st Tor ed edition (April 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031285868X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312858681
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,871,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott Baker discovered his love of reading in grade school when his mother bet him he couldn't stay up until midnight every night reading Dracula. He finished the book, won 50 cents, slept with the lights on for the next four years, and was hooked for life on science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Scott first attempted a novel in third grade. It was a page long and featured a rocket ship that ran on liquid copper.

In college, Scott drifted away from SF, but he was driven back to it by the deadly dullness of U.C. Irvine's Ph.D. program. Abandoning academia, he devoted himself to chemically-assisted hedonism in the Los Padres National Forest. During this time, Scott made several attempts at novels, but it was only after his van was stolen, he lost his job, his girlfriend left, and his roommate stole his rent money that he decided a life devoted to the joys of the moment wasn't all that much fun, so it was time to get serious about writing.

Scott wrote four novels-Nightchild, Dhampire, and Symbiote's Crown--before selling Symbiote's Crown. By the time it was published, Scott and his wife were living in the archetypical writer's garret, a cramped fifth-floor walk-up in Paris. Symbiote's Crown won the 1982 Prix Apollo for best French science fiction novel of the year.

Scott stayed in Paris for twenty years, working as translator and publisher's reader. He collaborated on several film scripts, working with directors such as Raoul Ruiz, Chile's former Minister of Culture. One film, Litan, won the Critic's prize at the Avoriaz Film Festival.

He also began writing shorter fiction. Four of Scott's stories were World Fantasy Award finalists and Still Life with Scorpion won the World Fantasy Award. He has three short story collections published in France.

Scott's next two novels, Drink the Fire from the Flames and Firedance, were fantasies set in the world of Ashlu. Inscrutable editorial imperatives meant that Firedance, second in the series, was published first, creating some confusion. The Ashlu books were followed by Webs, a psychological thriller with rather large spiders. Dissatisfied with Dhampire, he rewrote it from scratch. The vastly improved version was published as Ancestral Hungers.

After moving back to California, Scott created websites for the on-line tie-in for Steven Spielberg's film, AI, including one written in pseudo-Boolean code. The tie-in, AI: Who Killed Evan Chang was the first Alternate Reality Game. It was ranked Entertainment Weekly's number one website for 2002 and one of the New York Times' "Cool Ideas of the Year."

Scott's work has been published in England, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Finland. He has been a judge for the World Fantasy Awards, and is currently chairman of the judge's panel for the 2011 Philip K. Dick award.

After a long hiatus, Scott is currently working on an alternate history novel revolving around ethnopsychiatry, dire leopards, ancient Nubian medicine, traumatic brain injury, behavior-modifying parasites, and Napoleon's attempted conquest of Egypt.

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES
2002 Entertainment Weekly's number one website (AI: Who Killed Evan Chang?)
2002 A New York Times' "Cool Idea of the Year" (AI: Who Killed Evan Chang?)
1990 World Fantasy Award Finalist (Varicose Worms)
1990 Chosen for The Year's Fantasy and Horror (Varicose Worms)
1987 World Fantasy Award Finalist (Nesting Instinct)
1987 Chosen for The Year's Best Science Fiction (Sea Change)
1985 World Fantasy Award Winner (Still Life with Scorpion)
1983 World Fantasy Award Finalist (The Lurking Duck)
1982 Critic's Prize, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival (Litan)
1982 Prix Apollo for best science fiction novel published in France (Symbiote's Crown)


NOVELS
Symbiote's Crown (1978)
Nightchild (1983)
Drink the Fire from the Flames (1987)
Firedance (1985)
Webs (1989)
Ancestral Hungers (1995)

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS (French)
Nouvelle Recette Pour Canard Au Sang (1983)
Fringales (1985).
Aléas (1997).

FILM SCRIPTS
Litan (French), directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky
The Territory, directed by Raoul Ruiz

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars flawed, but classic occult horror, February 25, 2003

By 

S. parker "Ian Corrigan" (Madison, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Ancestral Hungers (Paperback)

Ancestral Hungers is a rewrite of the author's older book, called Dhampire, which has always been a favorite of mine. While most reviews think of this as a 'vampire' book, I think it's a broader canvas than that - it includes medieval grimoire sorcery, tantric occultism, and a lot of cool real vampire lore that never gets covered in the popular literature. Those who like the occult theories of Kenneth Grant will be thrilled by the stuff in here.
The book's greatest flaw is its ending, which wanders off into a full-scale tour of a halluncinatory hell without much rhyme or reason. This last section rather fails.
Still if you want a tale of black magic to curl your toes, I recommend it. Sexually depraved? You bet! Lunatic? Possibly... Steeped in elder lore? Fer sure!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great!! vampire literature, November 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Ancestral Hungers (Hardcover)

I loved this book. I couldn't put it down i wish that there was a second part I would love to find out what happens next. It has been many years since this book was published and i hope that there will be another one.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mining the Darkness, September 7, 2004

By 

G. Piscitelli - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ancestral Hungers: What Lat-Cn (Mass Market Paperback)

Scott Baker's Ancestral Hungers" may very well be the first "Gothic, neo-Noir" Novel of our generation. Unlike the lush romanticism of Anne Rice or the creepy surrealism of Clive Barker, "Hungers" barrels across the page like a passenger train in a Edward Hopper cityscape that's haunted by characters out of a Bosch nightmare. Like classic Noir, Baker's most terrible "Gothic" secrets are hidden under the calloused soul of his main character, and there they fester until circumstances drag it all out of him in a paryoxym of lust, rage, hellfire and transcendent mysticism.

And that's when the real fun of "Hungers" begins. The novel begins in familiar territory, then explodes into a pathos that distorts the classic western battle of "Good vs. Evil" (desire vs. control) and turns it on its head, focing the main character to tumble headlong into a tortured wilderness of metaphysical plot twists that ooze with the sacred Horrors of eastern religion and philosophy. It's a wild ride!

Baker's tale is a Fever Dream. A tale laced with Absinthian nightmares that would make Poe proud - yet it forces readers to confront their own deep seated emotional fears by relentlessly tearing at the narrow realities that we inhabit every day. And when all the fear and terror is spent, it finally asks us this question: "In a world bursting with the weight of the most mundane little evils, are we capable of true consciousness?" Are we ready to see through the everyday Horror that surrounds us and see it for what it truly is...