Tag Archives: Chicago

Establishing a New Dominion

It’s been a while since I’d read one of Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula novels, which I had been enjoying, so I decided to dive into the fifth book of the series, Dominion. Saberhagen casts Dracula in a heroic light and the first novel in the series, The Dracula Tape, is a retelling of Bram Stoker’s famous novel from Dracula’s point of view. In the second novel, Dracula teams up with Sherlock Holmes to solve a mystery. Starting with the third book, the series finds itself in the present day where some members of Dracula’s extended family have settled in Chicago. Dominion opens with a familiar face from the modern-era books, police detective Joe Keogh has been brought in to see if he can learn something about a rash of homeless people being murdered. This isn’t Joe’s regular beat, but he’s established a reputation for having informants who give him good insights. Sometimes it pays to have a vampire in your extended family!

Soon afterward, said vampire asks to meet with Joe. Currently Dracula is using the name Talisman and he asks Joe for help finding a missing sword. Next, we meet magician Simon Hill and his assistant Margie Hilbert, who are especially known for their mentalist act. Simon finds himself invited out into the country where a rich family has moved a castle stone-by-stone from France. The current generation has taken over the castle and is moving in. Simon’s invited to provide the entertainment for the housewarming. Although he’s convinced it’s a coincidence, we learn that Simon is distantly related to the family and spent time growing up around the grounds. He makes plans to sneak into the castle’s hidden passageways and secure Margie in a good location to make a surprise appearance at a key point during his performance.

The people who inherited the castle are Saul Littlewood and his wife Hildy. Also on the scene at the castle is Saul and Simon’s cousin Vivian, which is especially notable as she and Simon had something of a romantic fling years before. Meanwhile, a suspect has been identified in the murders. It turns out a serial killer from New Orleans named Carados, has been spotted in Chicago. We now meet a homeless man who calls himself Feather. Carados drugs Feather and takes him away for his nefarious aims.

With the weekend of the housewarming upon them, Simon and Margie drive out to the castle and secretly set their plans in motion. Without telling anyone in advance, they sneak into the secret passages from a hidden entrance on the grounds and make plans. Simon leaves Margie to wait for his signal, while he takes a little time to explore more of the passages. Soon Simon stumbles onto an old torture chamber where he finds Feathers tied up. Simon is quickly taken out of the picture for a time. Growing board while waiting for Simon, Margie also explores and finds the torture chamber. Carados and his henchmen give chase. Margie makes it outside and encounters Talisman, whose own research has brought him to the spot. Talisman and Margie are captured and brought back to the chamber. At that point, Feathers comes awake, becomes lucid and in a magical burst of energy sends both Margie and Talisman back in time to Arthurian Britain shortly before the Battle of Camlan where Artos will battle his son, the traitor Medraut. Fortunately, Feather also gives Margie the ability to understand the ancient speech of the time.

Not knowing that any of this has happened, Simon wakes up in a guest bedroom. After he gets his bearings, not certain how he got from the torture chamber to the room, he plans to go on with the performance as planned. However, as events unfold, he begins to realize that his cousin Vivian not only commands real magic, but is much, much older than he believed. It turns out that she’s also known as Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, and she’s out to establish a new dominion in the modern world.

Back in the past, Talisman and Margie must find clues about what happened to the missing sword and find their way back to the present. I enjoyed the idea of the magical figures from Arthurian legend clashing in the modern day and Saberhagen uses their magic effectively to tie the past into the present. That noted, Saberhagen wove a very intricate plot with many characters in a relatively short book. Unfortunately, this meant that many of the characterizations suffered and we didn’t really get to know many of the characters as well as I would have liked. Still, if you’re a fan of Arthurian fiction and are content for such fiction to include Dracula, this is a worthwhile read. The novel is readily available online at the most retailers.

Of course, this was also fascinating to me because my Scarlet Order vampires also have connections to the Arthurian story. Desmond Drake, the leader of the Scarlet Order mercenaries was a rival of King Arthur before he became a vampire. You can read their story in my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires. Learn more about the novel and read the first chapter at: http://davidleesummers.com/dragons_fall.html

Vampire-Human Relations

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Marita Crandle, owner of Boutique du Vampyre in New Orleans, and Steven Foley put together the Vampyre Library Book Club. Each month, Steven would select a book, members would read it, and at the end of the month, Steven would interview the author and readers would have a chance to ask questions. I was honored that my novel Vampires of the Scarlet Order was one of the book club’s selections alongside such works as Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, Dracul by Dacre Stoker, and The Casquette Girls by Alys Arden. My wife and I participated in the club after my book was featured and I discovered a number of great books. As the COVID-19 pandemic began to wane and life began to return to normal, I wasn’t able to read every book. One of the books I missed was Some Girls Bite by Choe Neill. I finally had a chance to read the novel a few days ago.

Some Girls Bite tells the story of a University of Chicago graduate student, Merit, who falls victim to a rogue vampire attack. Fortunately, vampire Ethan Sullivan, the master of Chicago’s Cadogan House is on the rogue’s trail, finds Merit and makes her a vampire, thus saving her life. We soon learn that Merit wasn’t the first victim of the rogue vampire. A couple of nights earlier, the vampire attacked and killed another young woman. At issue is that the vampire houses only recently made themselves known to humans and they want to show that they can live alongside humans. The vampires in the houses don’t attack people. Most drink donated blood in bags and those who drink from people, only drink from willing donors. So, the rogue vampire’s actions are threatening to bring an angry mob of humans down on the vampires.

As the story progresses, we learn that Merit is the daughter of one of the richest businessmen in Chicago. Ethan Sullivan sees her as someone who might help him maintain and hold a position of trust among humans. What’s more, Merit’s grandfather is a retired police officer who has taken the job of ombudsman between the Chicago’s supernatural and human communities. Vampires aren’t the only supernatural creatures who have been hiding in the shadows. There are also sorcerers, water nymphs, lycanthropes, and more. Still, vampires are the only ones who are known to most humans. Merit, though, doesn’t appreciate being a pawn in this developing saga of vampire human relations. She also resents being made a vampire against her will, even though it may have been the only thing that saved her life. Fortunately, after becoming a vampire, Merit has developed skills that allow her to find an important position of her own in House Cadogan.

As Merit navigates her way through her family relationships and the relationships with the vampires in her life, she learns about the vampire houses and how each one maneuvers to gain advantages over the others. Of course, now that the vampires are known to exist, they are playing politics in the human world as well. I’ve long found it interesting to consider how humans would interact with a non-human, intelligent species living in their world. Vampires make an especially interesting case, since they’re predators. Even though they’re predators, it would be a bad idea for vampires to destroy all of humankind. After all, that would destroy their food source. Whether vampires are known to humans in general or not, vampires would have to find a way to live in a world dominated by humans. I thought Chloe Neill presented an interesting vampire culture and presented ways they can be both clever and foolhardy when dealing with the humans around them.

As I write this, I’m settling in to edit my new vampire novel Ordeal of the Scarlet Order. My vampires live in secret, but they still have to live in a world dominated by humans. I’ve been having fun exploring how that works in this novel. I’ve been posting updates about the novel at my Patreon site, including a sneak peak of the cover, which has already been created by the talented Chaz Kemp. Also, my Patreon site helps to support this blog and keep it ad free. If you find value in my reviews and comments here, please consider supporting me there. What’s more, you can now join free for a week and take a peek behind the scenes before committing to being a regular patron. Why not go over and take a look at https://www.patreon.com/davidleesummers? I’ve shared several of my novels as I’ve edited them for new editions and I also plan to share Ordeal of the Scarlet Order as I get it ready for publication. Joining up would be a way to be among the very first readers and I’d love to hear your feedback!

Against the Day – Part 1

This weekend finds me at Tell-Tale Steampunk in Baltimore, Maryland. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll make time to drop by and say hello! You can get event information at: https://telltalesteampunk.com. In honor of being at Tell-Tale Steampunk, today’s post is about a steampunk novel I recently discovered.

I was first introduced to Thomas Pynchon’s writing during my junior year at New Mexico Tech. I took a course in the philosophy of science and we read Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow. It’s a dense novel and Pynchon is less interested in exploring traditional plots and character arcs than exploring themes through a series of set pieces. While there is a narrative arc, it’s not tied to a structure. Pynchon likes to play with language and his characters even break out in song from time to time. My philosophy professor gave me an “A” on my final paper about Gravity’s Rainbow and seemed genuinely impressed by how well I’d unpacked the novel. Because of the experience, I’ve long had something of a soft spot for Pynchon’s writing. I would go on to read his novels The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland and Mason & Dixon.

Recently, while getting ready for Wild Wild West Con, I learned that Thomas Pynchon had published a novel in 2006 called Against the Day, which many people consider steampunk. That was during the time when my children were young and I was busy being a stay-at-home dad, so I didn’t hear about the novel’s release at the time. Weighing in at almost 1100 pages, Against the Day is also Pynchon’s longest novel. Given my interest in both Pynchon and steampunk, I decided I needed to give the novel a read. Given the novel’s length and the way Pynchon’s narrative tends to wander, I thought it might be worth discussing the novel one section at a time. Against the Day is broken into five parts, so today I’m taking a look at Part 1: The Light Over the Ranges.

The novel opens as a team of boy adventurers called the Chums of Chance arrive at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 aboard their airship the Inconvenience. The Chums tend to be the thread tying the events of part one together. The Chums are ship commander Randolph St. Cosmo, second-in-command Lindsay Noseworth, handyman apprentice Miles Blundell, young Darby Suckling, and Chick Counterfly, who the Chums rescued from an encounter with the Ku Klux Klan. Rounding out their crew is the highly intelligent dog, Pugnax.

Through the Chums, we meet their mentor, Professor Heino Vanderjuice and the financier Scarsdale Vibe. Our businessman is concerned about Nikola Tesla’s plans to bring free electricity to all. He would like Professor Vanderjuice to find a way to counter Tesla’s work in Colorado Springs.

A private detective Nate Privett assigns his employee Lew Basnight to the Inconvenience to look for anarchists who may be trying to infiltrate the Columbian Exposition. Basnight also relays his misadventures escorting Franz Ferdinand around Chicago. The Chums of Chance also have an encounter with a photographer named Merle Rideout and his daughter Dahlia. We learn that Rideout’s wife ran off with a magician. The story follows Rideout to Colorado where he gets a job in the mines of the San Juan mountains.

The plot largely turns to Rideout’s adventures out west some six years after the fair and time with a dynamiter from the mines named Webb Traverse. Traverse is a rabble rouser and an anarchist looking to bring justice to the mines.

At the end of part one, we return to the Chums of Chance who are assigned to monitor Tesla’s experiments from the other side of the world, then must enter the hollow Earth to travel between the poles.

So far, the book has touched on familiar themes to Pynchon readers including labor rights, racial equality, and no small measure of scientific wackiness. The characters even break out in song a couple of times. It struck me in a few places how similar Pynchon’s set pieces are to events and characters in my Clockwork Legion series and other steampunk I’ve written. My novel Owl Riders opens at the World’s Fair in New Orleans. My story “The Falcon and the Goose,” scheduled to appear in the forthcoming Grease Monkeys anthology, is set on the railroad connecting the mining towns of Colorado where Merle Rideout and Webb Traverse meet. Merle and his daughter Dahlia remind me a little of Ramon and his daughter Alethea. Although younger, the adventuring spirit of the Chums reminds me a bit of the Owl Riders themselves from throughout the Clockwork Legion series and I couldn’t help but see a little of Professor Maravilla in Professor Vanderjuice. Unfortunately, Pynchon doesn’t give the women in his tale much to do so far. You can discover the Clockwork Legion series at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#clockwork_legion

Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing where Pynchon takes me as this journey continues. Part one is just about ten percent of the way through the novel, so I’m sure there are many twists and turns to come!