Those Who Hunt the Night / Barbara Hambly

 

Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Halloween Bingo

I'm not a true horror fan, but I read a lot of vampire books. Many times, I feel they aren't really too horrible. Barbara Hambly managed to make me quite uncomfortable with her version of the bloodsucker. They may still look more or less like people, but they don't really act like them anymore, unlike so many fictional vampires that are basically just long-lived humans with strange nourishment requirements. I also liked her premise, that someone is killing the vampires of London and that the eldest among them decides to “hire" a human to investigate and fix the problem.

Hambly has created the perfect main character to become a vampire hunter. James Asher is a retired spy, now an academic, so he has research skills, intelligence, attention to detail, and the ability to read a situation. Street smarts and book smarts, the perfect combination for the task. His wife, Lydia, is a medical doctor at a point in history when women aren't supposed to be educated in such things, and James may be a bit over protective, but he mostly treats her as an equal. He goes into the investigation with his eyes wide open, knowing that he is no match for Simon Ysidro or the other vampires physically, that he is being blackmailed into cooperation, and that he is likely expendable once the problem is solved.

The author’s sense of dramatic tension suited my temperament perfectly. She kept me on the edge of my seat without pushing me over into nightmare territory. The vampires were just dangerous enough. World weary and yet completely committed to continued existence. In some ways, they were like very creepy, cranky senior citizens—unhappy that the world is moving on and forcing them to change. (Rather like me when I'm forced to figure out yet another new website or technological gadget. There is swearing and some foot stomping until I have adjusted to it.) The main vampires character describes it well: ”There are stages--I have seen them myself, passed through them myself, some of them...When a vampire has existed thirty, forty years, and sees all his friends dying, growing senile, or changing unrecognizably from what they were in the sweetness of shared youth. Or at a hundred or so, when the whole world mutates into something other than what he grew up with; when all the small things that were so precious to him are no longer even remembered. When there is no one left who recalls the voices of singers which so inextricably formed the warp and weft of his days. Then it is easy to grow careless, and the sun will always rise.” I've heard similar sentiments from nonagenarian humans.

I'm so pleased that I found a copy of this first volume of a series featuring James Asher. Our library has some later volumes, but not the first couple. I can see where I'll be ordering installment two to continue my acquaintance with James and Lydia.




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