More Than Mortal

Funtopia review:	Third in the Victor Renquist series. Renquist is summoned to Britain by an old nosferatu flame in order to investigate an ancient legend, disturbed by archaeologists and now dangerously close to resurrection. However, Victor and his friends are not the only vampires in Britain with an interest in the contents of the old burial mound; and Victor is soon clashing blades with the wild, undead clansmen of the Lord Fenrior, laird of a sinister, nosferatu Brigadoon deep in the remote Scottish highlands. Yet another adroit change of scene for Victor Renquist - Farren manages to render the quiet, misty English countryside and the dark, lonely glens of Scotland every bit as scarifying as New York’s mean streets or the sprawling weirdness of LA. In this outing, strict nosferatu lore takes something of a back seat to swordplay and sorcery, although there are a couple of memorable vampire bloodfests which put a whole new slant on eightsome reels and Star Trek conventions. One of the great strengths of Farren’s novels is his almost throwaway deployment of various mythical and historical arcana into juxtapositions which suggest monstrous, buried continuities. Thus, in addition to the vampire/Cthulhu nexus familiar from the previous Renquist novels, More Than Mortal forges links to the King Arthur myth and Welsh bardic poetry, the fall of Rome, Quetzalcoatl, Nikolai Tesla, the Tunguska Disaster, the Manhattan Project and more besides. Paranoid? You will be. A trifle long on vampire protocol, but otherwise a fast, smart, violent read in the great Farren tradition. The suspense ending cries out for a sequel - and, sure enough, a fourth Renquist volume, Underland, is in the pipeline.
Other reviews:	Review by Ken Shimamoto, gratefully reproduced from I-94 Bar. To begin with, this ain't exactly a rock'n'roll book...that is, it's not a book about rock'n'roll, altho its author, former International Times/New Musical Express scribe, Deviants frontguy and Wayne Kramer lyricist Mick Farren is sho' nuff a rock'n'roll, uh, dude. And the Barman said it was okay. So... I've never been a big fan of horror fiction as a genre. My ex-squeeze owns every Stephen King opus in hardcover and on VHS too, but getting scared outta my wits was never a major entertainment value chez moi (although back when she was still my FUTURE ex-wife, I usedta take her to see scary movies as a way of getting her to stay overnight in my den of inequity when she was too spooked post-cinema to attempt the drive home). So whatthefuck am I doing reviewing a VAMPIRE NOVEL? A little background...Farren the author's noted for his sterling efforts in the pulp sci-fi genre. Arthur C. Clarke or Asimov he definitely AIN'T; as the man himself told Black To Comm a few seasons back, "they're ADVENTURE NOVELS," albeit ones that take place in future worlds of Farren's apocalyptic, drug and conspiracy-theory fueled imagination. ("Science fiction fandom grew up and became rock & roll fandom," no less a literary light than Gene Simmons of Kiss opined in a letter to Who Put the Bomp back in '76, and that might actually have been true of early rockwrite types like Paul Williams and Greg Shaw, although I dunno how applicable it'd be to, say, the Barman or John McPharlin or even Mr. David Fricke, may his tribe increase. But I digress.) I've got a whole shelf full of Farren paperbacks, some of which I copped from the man himself, others which I found at various Half Price Books locations here around the Metromess...in fact, I've got more of his fiction than anyone else's besides Elmore Leonard, a cat of a totally different stripe, working even more prolifically in a genre (crime fiction) that I don't usually dig. And I gotta tell ya, probably the best of the lot are the three (so far) installments in what they're calling the Renquist Quartette, which far from being a classical combo like you might think is actually the series of novels detailing the adventures of Victor Renquist, leader of a colony of the Undead who start out (in the first and prolly best book in the series, "The Time of Feasting") in Noo Yawk City, and migrate (in the manner of the Beverly Hillbillies) out to L.A. (following the author's own trajectory) in the follow-up, "Darklost." Half the fun of Farren's vampire, uh, nosferatu (gotta be Politically Correct) tales is the way he depicts these burgs from an outsider's perspective and has a bit of fun with modern city dwellers, rock'n'roll types, religious fanatics, etc. Farren's definitely tapped a rich vein here. (Sorry, Craig.) The characters in the series are some of the most vivid he's created. My favorite is Renquist's devoted right-hand, uh, whatever, Lupo, originally from Renaissance Italy but known to the modern-day mobsters to whom he occasionally contracts his services as Joey Nightshade. Picture something halfway between "Dracula" and "The Godfather" and you'll get the idea. In the latest installment, Renquist travels to the U.K., where an old flame from a coupla centuries back, Columbine Dashwood, has stumbled upon what appears to be the burial mound of the Merlin (of Knights of the Round Table fame), who winds up having a connection with the nosferatu. There are encounters with an undead samurai maiden named Marieko Matsunaga (gee whiz, wonder if any of the sword action was inspired by viewing "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"?), a clan of undead Scottish Highlanders, and enough loose ends to really whet your appetite for the final installment, "Underland," due in 2002. Three McGarretts
Linked Reviews	Eva Wojcik-Obert's review at Fantastica Daily
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