Vampyre [Hardcover]

Tom Holland (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Little, Brown & Co (1985)
• ASIN: B001GCZ2A4
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Damned to Everlasting Infamy, February 9, 2008

By 

Craobh Rua "Craobh Rua" (N. Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vampyre (Paperback)

George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron, is one of England's most famous 'Romantic' poets. He was born in 1788, the son of John Byron and Catherine Gordon, but inherited his title and property of his great-uncle in 1798. He travelled extensively throughout Europe and Asia Minor - his trips abroad included Albania, Greece and Italy - particularly when he was in trouble at home. (He piled up debts, his marriage collapsed after little over a year and caused a great deal of scandal with a series of illicit love affairs - his romantic entanglement with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, was particularly noteworthy. In fact, it is believed that Augusta's daughter was fathered by Byron, rather than by her husband). After his marriage to Anne Milbanke failed, Byron left England in 1816. He settled in Geneva for a while - where he became friendly with Percy and Mary Shelley - before moving on to Italy. In 1824, he sailed to Greece to help in their fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. However, Byron caught and died from a fever before seeing any action.

"The Vampyre" tells Byron's life story, though from a slightly different angle. Byron, as it turns out, never actually died and the book sees him telling his story to Rebecca Carville. He covers what he feels to be the key period of his existence, beginning with the trip to Greece where he became a vardoulacha - a vampire - and finishing with his faked death in Greece. Although the story is (obviously) embellished, Holland clearly had done his research before writing this book. It features Byron's most notable love affairs, his friendships with John Hobhouse and the Shellys, even the feeble contribution of his rather pitiful doctor, Polidor. In all honesty, I enjoyed how Holland wove Byron's `real' life into the story more than the vampire angle...in fact, the thought of a vampire playing such a key role in the `creation' of Frankenstein was something I found quite funny. All in all, a very readable story, though it won't necessarily keep you awake at night.

4.0 out of 5 stars A good inventive vampire novel, September 21, 2011

By 

M. J. QUINN "Matt Quinn" (Brighton, U.K.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vampyre (Paperback)

It took me a few chapters to get properly sucked into this book. But once I had, there were sufficient unexpected plot twists and revelations to keep me turning the pages right up to the very end of the book.

The story is based on the premise that Lord Byron was/is a vampire who faked his own death and remains alive some 200 years later. The book is his life story told from his own perspective in the form of a monologue that he delivers to a frightened young woman. In this respect the book resembles Anne Rice's book Interview with the Vampire. There are also some similar themes to those found in Rice's books: grappling with one's conscience, self-disgust, the loneliness of immortality and so on - what we might call the basic existential issues of the bloodsucker. However, in my opinion, there is enough that is different, inventive and original in this book to make it a worthwhile read.

All vampire novels create their own set of rules and constraints that restrict a vampire's behaviour and way of life. I thought that rules that Holland's vampires labour under were novel and inventive, in some cases having especially cruel and tragic consequences. I won't go into detail because these gradually emerge as the book unfolds and I don't want to spoil it for you. The fact that Byron is a historical figure adds interest too, as the plot is (loosely) constrained to follow Byron's own life-story, and offers its own vampiric twist on various real events and relationships. So Byron's marriage, his numerous affairs, his self-imposed exhile from England, and his friendship with Percy Shelley are all woven into the plot of this story (we even get Holland's version of the evening of ghost stories that led Mary Shelley to write the novel Frankenstein).

So, a good, well-constructed, well-paced plot (with maybe a bit of a slow start) with numerous twists and turns, some inventive twists on the nature of vampiric condition, a bit of horror, some sex, some cruelty and some tragedy, quite a bit of death (well, a vampire has to eat after all), along with some vampire angst, plus a reworking of Byron's life story. If that sounds like your cup of tea, buy this book. I enjoyed it.