Reviews

Lord of the Dead by Tom Holland

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incrediblemelk's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Holland was doing a PhD about Lord Byron and you can absolutely tell it from this novel, which is chockablock with historical detail about the period. And having researched Romantic literature and written about Byron myself, I recognised some key quotes that the character of Byron says here as things that the actual Byron wrote. It felt at times like very erudite fanfic.

The central conceit – “what if Lord Byron were a vampire?” – is something that you’re either instantly on board for or instantly repelled by. I was interested in Holland’s vampire worldbuilding considering that the trope of the vampire has had so many different iterations over the years specifically by Byron’s contemporary and employee John Polidori, who here gets quite a rough treatment.

Here it seems weirdly esoteric treatment: the way that vampires seem to be able to abandon their physical bodies to levitate or enter the dreams of others and that their victims they completely reduced to dust rather than simply draining them of blood. Once you’re a vampire you need blood or you’ll fade away, but you don’t get the full immortal package until you drink the blood of a direct relative.

Holland seems to have innovated the idea that to a vampire, the blood of your own relatives is the most alluring, delicious and irresistible, which is a neat way to reframe the IRL Byron’s deadbeat family and incestuous relationships.

I felt really sorry for Polidori, but also because we view him through Byron’s eyes he seems pathetic and contemptible – same with Lady Caroline Lamb, who called Byron “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.

I was intrigued by the way that Holland weaves the famous Villa Diodati summer writing retreat into the story, so that Byron is basically trying to seduce Shelley into becoming a vampire like him, and the horrifying vision that Mary Shelley has which leads her to write Frankenstein is actually another character, we find out later on.

The Interview with the Vampire-esque frame story – where Byron narrates his life story to a young woman who has tracked down his den in London – is weirdly boring but it does actually foreshadow the obsessive use of frame stories in The Sleeper in the Sands, another novel by Holland that I went on to to read after this and which seems to be part of Holland’s “vampire extended universe”.

Overall I was struck by how unmodern the storytelling was here. It’s completely unlike the way that most contemporary novels are written, and I wondered if when it was first published in 1995 it was considered ‘of the time’ then and so has just dated now, or whether it was always a little bit dusty, a little bit removed from the immediacy and excitement that I’ve come to expect from gothic fantasy fiction. The ending was weirdly anti-climactic and when I looked over the whole book, the pacing seemed uneven.

I read this as an ebook and it was my “book to read on my phone when I was out of the house and couldn’t carry a hard-copy book”. It felt pretty dry, although never boring.

eileenmalone's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Akin to Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire. The plot - of what it is to be a vampire - has some unexpected layers. However, the story is really driven by grappling with an immortality which necessitates killing. Given this is written by the historian Tom Holland, the narrative facts of Byron’s life story would be correct.,

shane_tiernan's review against another edition

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3.0

I haven't read a vampire novel in a long time. Was very glad this one was mostly a flashback to ancient times rather than something modern. Pretty cool story with some new "vampire rules". The ending wasn't great, but overall I liked it.

rme93's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I went in with a pretty good idea what the book was--a pulpy, vampire version of Lord Byron's life. In the days before social media, the "B movies of books" proliferated the market in cheap paperbacks, and could be fun even if they were not entirely good. This book is very much of that type.

On the one hand, I loved the concept. Byron's life and personality would make for a great vampire tale. The author's writing was fine as well for the most part. I enjoyed the early parts taking place in nineteenth century Greece perhaps the best. I tend to be a generous reviewer, and prefer to acknowledge when I enjoyed reading a book (even if some aspects were lacking), hence the three stars. As I mention after the spoiler below, if you really like vampire stories, you'll probably enjoy it. Hard core readers, who consume a variety of books, will likely find something fun here too even if the book itself is not entirely a success.

<Spoilers ahead starting here>
One clear problem with the book is the author's over reliance on the plot and characters from Bram Stoker and Anne Rice. It's one thing to pay homage, but full plot beats feel too obvious, especially when the author doesn't do enough to change them up. For example, here is a plot point: a young, well-to-do Englishman is visiting an exotic and "foreign" castle in the east ruled by an evil, seductive, and sophisticated tyrant. He ignores the peasants' superstitions, and now must escape the clutches of an ancient vampire's lair. That is both the beginning of Dracula, and is also in this novel. Here's another: A young, beautiful man is turned unexpectedly into a vampire, and has early days of terrible wonder but resists the urge to kill. An evil/morally dubious blond vampire pressures him into accepting his new condition, leading to the protagonist's moral downfall, and later disillusionment with vampirism and the world itself. Yes, that is both in this novel and a major component of Interview with the Vampire. For me, the over-adherence to famous vampire stories reduced the novel's freshness. This is a shame too, since it at times overshadows the cool new vampire lore in the book (such as the terrible cost of a vampire's youth, or vampirism in Ancient Greece).

The author also unexpectedly rushed through certain plot points, rendering them far less interesting. The Lord of the Dead/young leader of vampire stuff just feels like another homage. It was fun enough in Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat and even in Queen of the Damned, but she had built up to these points, not simply tossed them in right away. This concept was under explored and proved an unnecessary addition to the novel. Especially since the other vampires remained so undeveloped. If you want to discuss a vampire society, I feel that we either need more time in it, or like Anne Rice did in Interview, keep our character purposely on the outskirts of said society.

I think I could have been satisfied with the underdeveloped vampire material, if we had clung more closely to Byron's life and got a feeling for his personality and time. But even that often felt forced. We barely saw the society of the Romantics or the hypocrisy of the tonne. The relationships between Byron and his contemporaries (except for Hobhouse, who was hilarious) were so sidelined that you lose that social world entirely. Byron's real life just felt like plot points the author "had" to hit, rather than critical to the novel. If you don't want to explore Byron's life in a new way, why chose him as a fictionalized protagonist in the first place?

So, while I enjoyed this book generally, I often felt let down. It was a fantastic premise with flawed execution. I wish more of the concepts had been nuanced, or at least examined in greater depth. I love reading, so I had fun, but I probably would not suggest this book except to people who 1) really enjoy vampire books and want a less-popular deep cut, or 2) people who read widely and often, and thus won't feel annoyed that this is not a "great" book.

clemway's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

gorditacrunchpuzzle's review against another edition

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4.0

I'm surprised by how much I liked this. The concept is silly enough - the life and times of Lord Byron, but what if he was a vampire too? Sounds like the stuff of bad fanfiction yet here I am giving it a solid four stars. It's fascinating that while Holland tries to portray Byron as sympathetic, he doesn't at any point try to make his acts good. Vampire Byron is an enthusiastic bloodsucker, sister fucker, and baby killer. Grotesque and cynical, the entire novel is just dripping with depravity.

I will make a slight criticism that while there is a lot in homoerotic and lewd undertones Byron's bisexuality and pedophillia are never said outright. It gets a slight pass because it was written in the 90s, but considering how hard it went into the debauchery with everything else it seems like a missed opportunity on the author's part.