Title Hide Me Among the Graves Series --- Author Tim Powers Cover Art Sherriane Talon & Gabriela Insuratelu Publisher HarperCollins - 2012 First Printing William Morrow - 2012 Category Horror Warnings None Website --- Main Characters Christina Rossetti, Adelaide McKee, John Crawford, Polidori Main Elements Vampires, ghosts

London, winter of 1862, Adelaid McKee, a former prostitute arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that the girl lives - but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric ghost. But this was no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit covets dearly.

Polidori is also the late uncle and supernatural muse to the poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen years old, Christina unwittingly brough Polidori's curse upon her family. And when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife - turning her into a horrifying vampire - and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante agree that they must destory their monstrous uncle and break the spell. Determined to save their daughter, McKee and Crawford join forces with the Rossettis, and soon these wildly mismatched allies are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence goes beyond their wildest imaginings.

A strange coincidence of books I read this year. I started off with the Burton & Swinburne series by Mark Hodder, where of course Algernon Swinburne features prominently and the Rossettis show up briefly. Then I picked up Vikram and the Vampire, which happened to have been written by the real world Richard Burton. And finally I picked up this book, where the Rossettis are major characters and Swinburne plays a minor but key role. I didn't plan any of that out, so it was almost a little unnerving, what with the Burton & Swinburne books being all about alternate timelines, it made this book feel like just one more possible alternate.

Then I discovered that this book is actually downright scary. Usually vampire books don't scare me but the vampire in this one is more hungry ghost than your traditional bloodsucker, in fact it didn't seem to be able to decide what the "vampire" really was, tossing in the idea of the nephilim in there as well. But unclear as it was, it was still an utterly fascinating read though I usually stay away from creepy reads. I had read On Stranger Tides and didn't care for it all that much, but this book sucked me in, even as the writing style made me work a little harder than usual. I tend to take on 100 pages a day but 50 of this one was my max, but I liked it all the more for that.

The vampires have incestuous relationships with their victims, but much as the victims hate and fear the creatures, they love them too. In fact vampires coming back to prey upon their family is a pretty standard piece of folklore, but exploring that relationship gives one shivers. The main characters are all poets and writers and so long as the vampire feed off of them, their poetry reaches levels they could never otherwise achieve. They are for all intents and purposes addicted to their abusers. Each chapter is headed by a bit of real poetry by the various characters, and given the darkness in what they wrote, made this demonic muse idea entirely plausible.

And, I guess Algernon Swinburne must have been quite a character. I didn't think that Mark Hodder had made it all up, but Powers portrayed him in almost exactly the same way so it was kind of uncanny reading all those books in the same year.

And I will always remember this book for the animals in it. John is a vet who took care of many cats and horses over the years. It almost made me cry when one character asked him why all these ghost cats follow him wherever he goes, and when he needed them most, they saved his life, thanking him for all the kindness he showed them when they were alive. I'd like to think that all my kitties of the past are haunting me still.

Completely by chance I discovered Powers had previously written a book called The Stress of Her Regard with a main character called Michal Crawford. The last name of one of the main characters in this book that spoke of his parents having had encounters with a vampire before. Now I know its reference to an actual book I'll have to hunt down a copy of.