Customer Reviews

THE VAMPIRE COUNTESS

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The Vampire Countess is another masterpiece of posthumous collaboration between 19th century fantasy and crime novelist Paul Feval and translator/adaptor Brian Stableford.

Paul Feval was a competitor of other mid-19th century French novelists such as Alexander Dumas and Eugene Sue who published their works in newspapers and journals. Unlike these contempory literary luminaries, Paul Feval has not gotten his due in terms of modern readership and recognition. That is beginning to change with the release by Black Coat Press of Stableford's translations of a number of Feval's fantasy and crime novels.

The Vampire Countess tells the strange story of a Hungarian Countess who takes up lodgings in Paris in the company of a secret society of operatives who appear to be scheming to perpetrate either large scale crimes, or to foment political unrest, perhaps both. The Countess, of a personal beauty almost intoxicating, appears to have another even more troubling secret. She may be a centuries-old vampire, or ogre-like creature, who must periodically restore her youth by killing beautiful children and grafting their removed scalps to her own head. And so she is (or rather appears to be) involved in several levels of nefarious activity: criminal, political, and supernatural, in a complex web of Machiavellian schemes of which no one, even her allies, is fully cognizant. One of the protagonists develops a love interest in the Countess (at his own risk!), and another seeks to resolve the disappearance of a child and will stop at nothing until the mystery is resolved.

And so the reader is launched on an exotic (and at times erotic) journey through early 19th century Paris and its environs in a rapidly moving page-turner that involves multiple intrigues: how will the love interest be resolved, will the child be rescued, will the fragile political establishment explode, and most compelling of all, what is the true nature of Countess Adhema - victim of unfortunately selected associates, scheming criminal, or monstrous revenant from beyond the grave? Paul Feval laughs with us and sometimes at us as we make this intoxicating journey, and he never tells us the answers beyond the shadow of a doubt. But for me the erotic, hallucinogenic, rapturous scene near the end when the Countess encounters her true love within an ancient deteriorating castle in Hungary tips the balance of conflicting evidence and solves the mysteries to my own satisfaction. Other readers may not be so sure . . . A great read!