Necroscope (Avengers)

the Men And Women Of E-branch And The New Necroscope, Jake Cutter, Are Anxious To Find—and Destroy—the Wamphryi Trio Who Are Intent On Converting Earth Into A Vampire Hunting Ground. After Turning A Cruise Ship Into A Bloody Battleground, Lord Malinari And Lady Vavara Plan Their Next Campaign, While Lord Swartz's Spores Spread A Mysterious Sleeping Sickness That Turns Its Victims Into Something Other Than Human.e-branch Action Teams Have Almost More On Their Plates Than They Can Handle—locating Renegade Communists Who Threaten Nuclear Homicide; Cooperating With Gustav Turchin, Head Of Russia's Mind-spy Organization, In Trying To Permanently Close The Gate Between The Wamphyri World And Earth; Analyzing The Spore Plague; And Always, Always Hunting The Wamphyri.publishers Weeklythis New Bottle Can't Disguise The Aging Wine Of Lumley's Necroscope Series Or The Increasingly Stale Bouquet Of Its Last Few Installments. Set In A World Where The Vampire Villains Are Resurrected As Regularly As The Cinematic Frankenstein's Monster, And Where The Psychic Hero Is Forever Channeling The Thoughts Of Dead Characters From Previous Episodes, This Expansive 13th Novel Is Distinguished Mostly By Its Sense Of D J Vu. The Story Picks Up Right After Events In Necroscope: Defilers (2000) With The Revelation That Vampires Nephran Malinari, The Lady Vavara And Lord Szwart Are Still At Large, Despite The Efforts Of Ben Trask's E-branch Operatives To Wipe Them Out In Greece. The Espionage Agents Chase The Elusive Vampires Through Turkey, Trying To Prevent Them From Seeding The World With Spores Of Virulent Vampire Fungi. Jake Cutter, Neophyte Necroscope (someone Who Can Converse With The Dead), Remains Mostly On The Periphery, Still Wrestling With A Personal Vampire Taint That Makes Him Resemble More And More The Similarly Infected First Necroscope, Harry Keogh. Once Again Troubles At Russia's Interdimensional Perchorsk Gate, Which Opens To The Vampire Universe, Add To The Mess. Lumley Still Excels At Depicting Heroes Larger Than Life And Horrors Worse Than Death, But His Rehash Of Earlier Intrigues And Plot Twists Bogs The Tale Down. The Exciting Pyrotechnic Finale Appears To Bring Resolution To Some Long-running Subplots, But Also Calls Attention To How Often This Novel Coasts When It Could Explode. (june 5) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.