4 stars

Mick Farren

Darklost

Tor Books

2000

ISBN 0-312-86979-7

The slaughter that was the eponymous Time of Feasting in Farren's previous novel of the nosferatu forced Victor Renquist and his colony to flee Manhattan. Now in Los Angeles, the colony is feeling the loss of its members. Power-hungry Julia is particularly ready to act: she not only wants to become Victor's consort but soon sets her sights on a new addition to the colony -- Victor's wishes be damned. Victor is only half aware of the tensions among colony members. As he pulls out of grief over the death of his consort, Cynara, a new matter draws his attention. The aura of something "unusually evil and possibly dangerous" is emanating from the Apogee building. Apogee headquarters, home of a what is ostensibly only a highly profitable nonprofit religion, conceals in its bowels the seed of a new world order -- an order that Apogee founder Marcus De Reske plans to initiate by calling forth the Great Cthulhu to do his bidding. It is his attempts to summon up this very real entity -- an entity with ancient and none-too-friendly ties to the nosferatu -- that have generated the energies Renquist cannot ignore.

Within the Apogee's inner circle, tensions and dissensions are even greater than in Renquist's colony. Marcus's wife Philipa, a true sensitive, realizes that Marcus may be in over his head on this one -- which is why Marcus plans to replace her with bimbo-ish Tara Swerling. Orton Ghast, who has been handling the business end of Marcus's crackpottery for years, also doesn't like the direction Marcus seems to be taking -- and the more he sees, the less it's lack of profits he worries about. Renquist can also feel, but is less concerned about, the Darklost -- Elaine Dance, a human started on the road to conversion by Victor's deceased consort. Unable to complete it or turn back, she has followed the colony because her nature will allow nothing else. A series of coincidences enables her to warn Renquist when suspicion of cultlike activities falls on the colony -- but will her help be enough to let her to plead her case for becoming one of their number?

There's plenty of action and suspense, whether you like the unpretentiously bloody and violent predations of the nosferatu or the more calculated adventures of Victor and Lupo's reconnaissance of the Apogee building and the execution of Victor's carefully orchestrated plans for blowing his would-be attackers' minds (no less exciting for the reader when said plans go sadly awry). The Cthulhu puts in appearances too, not only in a verisimilistic present but in Renquist's visions of the past; in both, it shows itself no less inimical to the nosferatu than to the human race at large. A showdown in the Apogee sanctum sanctorum, however, does not neatly tie every loose thread: the aftermath reveals that another Darklost has aims beyond simply finding a place in a nosferatu colony.

Catherine B. Krusberg