`THIRST' QUENCHES CURIOSITY.``Slave of My Thirst'' by Tom Holland (Pocket Books; $23) Our rating: Four Stars The hero of ``Lord of the Dead,'' Tom Holland's previous horror novel, is Lord Byron, turned into a vampire on an ill-fated trip to the Balkans. The book was inspired by a short story written by the poet's doctor, John Polidori John William Polidori (7 September 1795 – 24 August 1821) was an Italian English physician and writer, known for his associations with the Romantic movement and credited by some as the creator of the vampire genre of fantasy fiction. - the first real vampire tale in Western literature. The aristocratic villain is a thinly disguised Byron. Byron and Polidori are back in Holland's new novel, ``Slave of My Thirst,'' but they are not the primary characters in this epic set in the remote Himalayas and the London of the 1880s. The story is told in the first person by several people, most notably John Eliot John Eliot may be:
n.pl hematologic dyscrasias that affect the component cells and plasma elements of the blood. They are generally divided into two broad groups: those in which an increase in bulk occurs (e.g. , and Bram Stoker, who wrote ``Dracula'' a decade later, supposedly as a result of the events he experiences here. Readers familiar with the ``Dracula'' novel, not the many films more or less based on it (usually less), will recognize places and characters. In the beginning of the book, Eliot narrowly escapes death from vampiric Kali worshipers in northern India. When he returns to London, he finds that a woman called Lilah, an incredibly beautiful, sinister creature with supernatural powers, has ensnared an old friend, a politician involved in deciding the future of the India/Afghanistan frontier. Holland cleverly combines world mythology, vampire lore and a little Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper Jack the Ripper, name given to an unidentified late-19th-century murderer in London, England. From Aug. to Nov., 1888, he was responsible for the death and mutilation of at least seven female prostitutes in the East End section of London. into a frightening whole that has the hallucinatory hal·lu·ci·na·to·ry adj. 1. Of or characterized by hallucination. 2. Inducing or causing hallucination. power of the opium opium, substance derived by collecting and drying the milky juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. Opium varies in color from yellow to dark brown and has a characteristic odor and a bitter taste. smoked by the addicts preyed on by Lilah in her waterfront lair. CAPTION(S): Photo Photo: no caption (Book cover - SLAVE OF MY THIRST) |
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