Hide Me Among the Graves

De: Tim Powers

Narrado por: Fiona Hardingham

Winter 1862, London. Adelaide 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 is 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 poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen, Christina unwittingly brought Polidori's curse upon her family. But the curse bestowed unexpected blessings as well, inspiring both Christina and Gabriel's work. But when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife - turning her into a vampire - and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante agree they must destroy their monstrous uncle and break the spell, even if it means the end of their creative powers.

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. Ultimately, each of these disparate individuals - the sensitive poet, the tortured painter, the straitlaced animal doctor, the reformed prostitute, and even their Artful Dodger - like young daughter - must choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers.

©2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.; 2012 Tim Powers

Ghost Cats

One of Powers’ most gripping and detailed worlds. Includes the best scene ever written involving ghost cats.

The Elephant of Surprise

This is a sequel to THE STRESS OF HER REGARD. The two novels share some characters and the same race of Nephlim vampires. The book is pleasant enough but failed to fully engage me. The story seemed so very pedestrian, so devoid of terror, as if Powers were trying to demystify the vampire legend. I’m sure that I would like it more on a second listen. I do think that there is enough here to make it worth my while at a later date.

Fiona Hardingham has a wonderful soothing British accent that reminds me of Susan Adams or Saskia Reeves, two of the better narrators for the novel DRACULA. Her voice is so very pleasant that, unfortunately, she succumbs to the malady of many female narrators: the book seems like it is entirely done by an all girl cast. I often was surprised to realize than one of the characters in a scene was not a female but was supposed to be a male. Sometimes her male voices even have voices that are higher-pitched than the females in the scene; very confusing. As a result, she never manages to become transparent to the text. Her characters are entertaining but somehow never made me believe that they were anything other than Fiona Hardingham.

Macabre

As with The Stress of Her Regard, Tim Powers has created historical fiction where the historical details are as accurate as they can get, and the story he weaves draws those details into something truly macabre. It's one of the hallmarks of Powers that makes me admire him as a writer. When I found about this pseudo-sequel to that other novel, my first question was whether or not he could capture lightning in a bottle twice. The previous novel started slowly and built itself into one of the greatest vampire stories I've ever read to date. For the first third of this novel, I was thinking this was a 3-star book. I shouldn't have doubted him.

Where The Stress of Her Regard deals with Byron, Keats, Shelley, etc., as told through the POV of his character Michael Crawford, this one deals with the next generation of poets and artists, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina, via the POV of Crawford's son, now grown and with a life of his own. I say this is a pseudo-sequel for just that reason. The events of the story here are clearly overshadowed by and as a direct result of those in the previous novel, but this does stand on its own as well. On its own, it morphs into a magnificently sinister read. It's only when compared to the original that this one lacks anything. Even so, it's still a 5 star read by the time you hit the halfway point. I know of very few vampire stories that can hold up comparatively. It's because Powers takes the time to set everything into place, and he tells this story as though it were written like the works of the period. It just feels right. As a bonus, because the historical events are there for anyone to verify, the weirdness practically invites the reader to get to know (or to reacquaint with) the Rossettis just as the first one did for Byron and his ilk. It's the perfect on-ramp for (re)discovery of the Romantic era.

Great novel, poorly edited reading

I'm a big fan of Tim Powers, and I was really looking forward to this audiobook. However, the narration is a disappointment. In some cases I think that editing is at fault; once some words were repeated, and multiple words are mispronounced--including a major character's name. The reader has also made some odd choices about the characters' accents. I found it a bit unbelievable that a middle-class, well-educated country clergyman's daughter would develop a working-class London accent at age 20 or so after a year spent as a prostitute and then keep that accent for the rest of her life. I wonder the same thing about another character, Edward Trelawny, who in real life was an educated man from an old family and friend of Byron and Shelley--a cockney? No. Finally, the reader seems to struggle to make sense of the poems that are used as epigraphs throughout the book.

Good, creepy vampire story

What did you love best about Hide Me Among the Graves?

The narrator. This is only my second Audible book, but Fiona Hardingham was lovely, and I'm thinking about trying The Scorpio Races just because she narrates it. She's got a pleasant voice, doesn't narrate too slowly, and does the various British accents with better skill and fluency than most American narrators would.

It was also refreshing to read a vampire story without romance or teen angst. The vampires were evil, made no apology for it, and that was that.

Any additional comments?

Normally I dislike books which take liberties with historical figures' lives, but this is sort of Tim Powers's thing, and he did it beautifully. He took the Rosettis' real history and filled in his story between the lines, in a sort of way that might make sense were vampires and ghosts real.