When David stumbles upon a tragic young woman in a sordid Limehouse pub, he has no idea she’d recognize him as the last vampyre alive, nor that she’d be the one to pull out his story. Yet as he recalls his life from the sweltering vineyards of Ancient Rome to the cold horrors of Medieval Romania – as well as his tumultuous past with the mad and mysterious Lucius – he realizes she is much more than what she seems. Gothic horror and mythological fantasy blend seamlessly together in this thrilling adventure, breathing new life into vampire lore as it reveals its true origins. The Ancient Ones is a tale of myth, mayhem, and magic…with a dash of romance that bites.
This one’s a tough one for me…why? Because I follow the author across all sorts of social media, and I really respect her viewpoint on so many things.
But this, while it started out reasonably strong, just fell awfully short for me, which is a surprise. This was one of those books that I really expected to love.
And while I can point out certain elements in the novel that didn’t work for me, I’m not sure I can point to a main, singular reason this didn’t grab me like I thought it would.
The elements that didn’t work for me were not big things.
I wasn’t crazy about having too many characters with names starting with D. There was Davius, who is also, at times, David, or Great David in this. Then there’s Dragos. And there’s Danulf. And that’s not even counting Dracul, who is namechecked several times.
There’s a lot of history here, as well. I don’t mind some history in my horror, I really don’t, but Thompson doubles down on it, then doubles down on it again.
Here’s my bigger issues. First and foremost—and this is purely my own taste—this book read far too Anne Rice for me. I’m not a fan of Rice’s overly detailed, minute-by-minute history of characters from the dawn of time until present day. I find it tedious when she does it, and it truly started to grate on me here as well, despite the reasonably short 280 pages. If Anne Rice is your thing, I’m telling you now, you’ll probably really love this novel. Me? Yeah, sorry, Rice has never done it for me.
Aligned with that last fact, was how Thompson chose to try and mesh so many of the various pantheons of gods, from Greek and Roman, through Egyptian, and Christian, and then bolt on new vampire and werewolf myths to them. While the author was surprisingly successful at times, it became less and less fun when I found out that this character was also that god…and also that god…oh, and that one too. And this other character was also this god…and that god…and that other one over there…oh, and they’re also related to this first character.
Honestly, it got so complex, and convoluted, that it began to feel like the plot was being contorted in unnatural ways just to be able to squeeze in one more collection of gods. By the time the Egyptian ones came in—and seemed quite important to the plot—I found was simply all out of fucks to give by that point. And I’m not trying to be mean when I say that, it was more of a case of god-exhaustion. I know Thompson’s kind of aiming for her version of a Unified Field Theory of godlike characters, but for me, it just felt too much.
There was also, finally, a point where I questioned whether there was a singular through-line for the plot. There is, but I can’t say what it is without spoiling some stuff, so I won’t, but I will say there is, but it just takes a long time to manifest.
What I came away with in this book is that there isn’t a single character who is just a single character. And there are an awful lot of characters who start good and break bad, or start bad and break good.
So, here’s my thing, maybe it was the multiple time periods/multiple religions that got to me. Maybe it was all the gods. Maybe it was that I couldn’t get the taste of Anne Rice out of my eyeballs, but I didn’t enjoy this very much at all.
I’m hoping that most of the convolution is over with now, and the balance of the trilogy will be a little more straightforward. Because I’m invested now. I’ll see it through.
Tobin has been writing so long, there was very likely some graffiti to be found in his mother's womb. He's tried writing a few things, but his diseased little mind always came around to horror, despite all the sour looks he got when he revealed that.
Somewhere along the way, he also found a woman that has put up with his crap for over thirty years, and two kids (who somehow survived to adulthood, despite having him as a parent) who are mostly not that embarrassed by him. Mostly.
For quite a while, he held a respectable job with a respectable corporation where he was a communications specialist, but now he's just an old retired guy who swears a lot.
Tobin writes ugly stories about bad people doing horrible things. You can pick up his six-book horror series, The Aphotic, wherever you buy your books. He'd really like it if you did.
