I finished reading this book a few days back, but what with a hectic weekend and then the past couple days of work in Clevedon, I've not had the time or energy to write up this review before now. Vampire of the Mists by Christie Golden is a Ravenloft shared world novel. Ravenloft is a dark demiplane of gothic horror, that is linked via the Mists to other worlds, drawing travellers and such into its confines. It is much easier to get into Ravenloft than it is to get out!
The story however, begins on the Forgotten Realms world of Toril, where we meet the books main "hero" Jander Sunstar. I put the word hero in quote marks, because Jander is a vampire. A gold elf vampire to be precise, turned when he was 200 years old, he has been undead for five centuries. He is not evil, and he hates his existence, but is scared to take his own life, for fear of becoming a creature known as a Crimson Death (which are suppossedly formed from the spirits of vampires), which would be a far worse existence, than the one he is already condemmed too.
During his travels he arrives at the growing city of Waterdeep, and there he feeds on the residents of the insane asylum, when the need to feed can no longer be slaked on the blood of animals. In the asylum he meets Anna, a woman driven mad by some event in her past, but one strikingly beautiful and untouched by time, she has been a resident for over a hundred years when Jander finds her. Touched by her beauty and the hope that he can restore her mind, he spends decades nurturing her, only to lose her to fever. In the time he has known her, she has spoken little, but he has gleaned a name, Barovia, and he swears revenge on the one who drove her mad. The mists hear him and gather him from that world, drawing him into the demiplane, and to the nation of Barovia.
There he soon meets the enigmatic ruler of that forsaken land, Count Strahd von Zarovich, a cold, cruel man who rules Barovia with an iron grip. He too is a vampire, though one far younger than Jander and the two come to an uneasy alliance. Jander needs the Count's library and resources to track down any mention of Anna, and what happened to her there, to make her as he had found her. Strahd, newly undead, has much to learn from the elder vampire.
The book is amazingly well written, and is highly regarded amongst affiando's of gothic horror novels. I don't go in for the Anne Rice whiny vampires, who spend their undead existences bemoaning their tragic fates. Vampires are monsters, pure and simple. They are the walking dead. They are parasites, and they are very powerful. Few writers seem to get that right, but in her first novel, Miss Golden absolutely nails it, and this is a novel that ranks up there with Dracula itself, as one of the very best in the genre. The contrast between Strahd and Jander is the soul of the book, as Jander spends years as the Count's guest in his crumbling castle, learning more about the land and it's past, as well as the Count's role in it, and slowly but surely becoming more distant from his host.
This book easily gets a 5/5 from me, and while it has been out of print for many years (it was first printed in 1991), it is well worth tracking down a copy. You won't be disapointed!
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