2 Stars

Stephen Mark Rainey and Elizabeth Massie

DARK SHADOWS: DREAMS OF THE DARK

HarperCollins

ISBN 0-06-105752-5

1999

The witch Angelique reaches from beyond the grave to pursue her revenge on vampire Barnabas Collins, while Victoria Winters struggles with gaps in her memory, sinister clairvoyant experiences, and the mystery of her connection (if any) with the Collins family. To these familiar DARK SHADOWS motifs, DREAMS OF THE DARK adds a vengeance-obsessed vampire, Southern gentleman Thomas Rathburn. While dying on a Civil War battlefield, he was made one of the undead through the occult powers of a friend attempting to save his life. Drawn by Angelique's influence, Rathburn travels to Collinwood in search of the descendants of a Union officer who slaughtered his family. After meeting Barnabas and seducing Vicki, Rathburn discovers that he is only a pawn of Angelique, who wants to use him as a gateway into the world of the living. Barnabas reluctantly joins him in a plan to thwart Angelique's scheme. Rathburn finally attains peace, and Vicki finds a clue to her origins.

The strongest element in the novel is Thomas Rathburn. Flashbacks to the Civil War demonstrate that he was once a decent and honorable man. As a vampire, he is arrogant and ruthless, but given the wanton murder of his wife and child, he has some excuse for thinking of human beings as violent beasts. Unlike the stereotypical undead of movies and most recent fiction (but like the classic 19th-century vampires), he can walk in daylight, though uncomfortably. He can also eat ordinary food if necessary. These factors help to make him a refreshingly different and interesting vampire. The tensions and uneasy alliance between him and Barnabas held my attention through the ebb and flow of the plot. A weakness, to me, is the character of Vicki, who does not seem fascinating enough to justify the obsessive infatuation of both Barnabas and Rathburn. Aside from her psychic connection to Collinwood's past, she comes across as simply a nice girl. (But, then, I never found Josette very interesting, either; I always wanted to shake Barnabas and tell him to get over it, already.) Nevertheless, she and Rathburn indulge in a couple of sensual interludes that are a pleasure to read. The book does suffer from a few irritating minor errors, such as the misuse of "lay" for "laid" (past tense of the transitive "lay" -- surely the mistake of an ill-educated copyeditor, not the authors), the misidentification of the witch-hunters' handbook MALLEUS MALEFICARUM as a sinister grimoire, and repeated references to "pulsating" veins (only arteries pulsate, of course). Not a great novel, but a fun read, especially for fans of DARK SHADOWS and the traditional Gothic.

Reviewed by Margaret L. Carter