Deliver us from Evil
Tom Holland
Warner Books, 579 pages
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Having suffered a fatal overdose of vampire fiction in the 1980's (in the form of Anne Rice's The Queen of
the Damned--I still can't figure out why I read the whole book), I generally steer clear of the genre. But
I'm a sucker for speculative fiction in a historical setting, especially if it provides alternate explanations
for real events, and so I couldn't resist Tom Holland's Deliver Us From Evil, a vampire extravaganza set
in Restoration England.
When a horribly mutilated body is discovered near the ancient stone circle known as Clearbury Ring, Captain Foxe,
head of the local Roundhead militia, finds no clues as to the identity of the murderer, much less why a man should
be killed in such a terrible way. But later, when a similarly murdered child is found in a church built on the
foundation of another pagan site, the evidence leads Captain Foxe to Wolverton Hall, the deserted home of Sir Charles
Wolverton, who is thought to have died fifteen years earlier.
But Sir Charles isn't dead--or not exactly. An ancient and monstrous evil (which some believe to be a god, and
others know to be a demon) has been awoken by a powerful vampire who calls himself Faustus, and temporarily housed
in Sir Charles's body. Faustus plans to bring the demon into the world in its own form, and the murders are actually
sacrifices to serve that purpose. When Captain Foxe deduces the truth, he himself becomes the demon's final victim.
His son Robert, fleeing the destruction of his home and the execution of his mother--both engineered by Faustus--becomes
the demon's victim also, though in a different way.
Robert is taken in by a pair of charismatic vampires--who, it later turns out, have not happened along by accident.
Brought up to be a good puritan, he is as horrified by their sybaritic lifestyle as by their blood-drinking. After
a period of change and struggle, however, he decides to accept this new existence. He remakes himself as Robert
Lovelace, whose sole ambition is revenge: for his father, for his family, for everything he loved that was destroyed.
His quest takes him from decadent Restoration London to the ghettos of Prague to the wilderness of America. In
the process he is transformed, both physically and emotionally, and discovers that his journey is not merely choice,
but destiny.
One could point out a number of inconsistencies in Deliver Us From Evil. The complex plot isn't always tied
together as tightly as it could be, and some of the story's huge chronological leaps are jarring. A good chunk
of the book involves various characters narrating their own tales--a stylistic device that fits well with the novel's
historical setting, but occasionally seems excessively convoluted, especially when a narrator is quoting someone
who is quoting someone else. And the ending doesn't entirely satisfy: it comes too quickly, and there isn't quite
enough of it.
But--and this makes all the difference--Holland is a very fine writer. His command of language, his skillful characterizations,
his ability to create a powerful atmosphere, together transcend the problems mentioned above, and make Deliver
Us From Evil a really riveting read. This is a lush, dark, sensuous novel, awash in sex and violence, laced
with vivid detail, and written with a passion that leaps off the page.
Holland's scholarship is impressive, lending his various settings an admirably authentic feel. The sense of period
is enhanced by a slightly archaic prose style, and dialogue that suggests the speech of the time without ever seeming
artificial or unnatural--a difficult achievement, nicely realized. The supernatural world of Holland's story is
cleverly interwoven with actual historical events, providing alternate vampirical explanations for everything from
the Great Fire of London to the death of Christopher Marlowe. There are many real-life figures mixed in with the
fictional ones (this appears to be a trademark of Holland's books)--some famous and some less so, including the
amazingly debauched Earl of Rochester, and a very otherworldly John Milton, whose poetry underscores some of Robert's
more revelatory and desperate moments.
This isn't a book for the squeamish. While Holland's horrors aren't really gratuitous, they are fairly stomach-churning.
Don't read it after eating--but do read it; if you have any taste at all for vampire fiction, you'll be glad you
did.
Copyright © 1999 Victoria Strauss
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