Hide Me Among the Graves

By: Tim Powers

Narrated by: 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

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.

Narration is a no go

Tim Powers is one of my favorite authors. I devour everything he writes. Unfortunately the narration on this ruined it for me. Sometimes I cannot even understand what she is saying as she slurs words, mispronounces words and generally doesn't really know the characters.

I'd love to hear this narrated by someone else as I really want to listen to it but I just can't continue.

One More Mortal Sin

What do you want from a sequel? Comfort? More of the same? Or simply a continuation? A further exploration that goes somewhere different? There isn't one right or wrong answer. Sometimes it's one thing, sometimes it's something else, sometimes it's a mixture. Tim Powers' Hide Me Among the Graves falls into the latter category - there are similarities to its predecessor, but it is also very much its own book.

You should know upfront that Tim Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard is one of (if not my all time) favorite vampire books of all time. It was one of the first things I reviewed here, and it unlike any other vampire story I’d ever read. What was terrifying about it wasn’t just the inhuman vampires (though they were), but the way it examined the notions of the muse, as well as success and the arts. It remains to this day one of the most frightening books I've read.

Hide Me Among the Graves includes vampires, and some minor characters return, but it’s much more of a dark fantasy adventure than it is dark fantasy horror. It's Doctor Sleep to The Shining. There is plenty of spookiness afoot in séances, ghosts cursed to swim the Thames, and spiritualism. But it never achieves the shocking horror awful lusts of The Stress of Her Regard. It’s almost like the second half of Dracula, where Van Helsing organizes Jonathan Harker, Dr. Seward, and the rest of the gang to go a vampire-hunting. There’s danger, but it’s matched with humor and excitement.

It’s also features much more of an ensemble. Where the first book held a relatively tight focus on Michael Crawford (with occasional dalliances into Percy Shelley), the net here is cast much broader. Happily, the ratio of male/female heroes is much more even, which is good. One of the main issues with The Stress of Her Regard is that Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) had so little to do, and was pushed to the side for her husband and friends. This time out, we get the poet Christina Rosetti, street smart former prostitute Adelaide McKee, and young Johanna. They’re joined by veterinarian John Crawford, poet Dante Gabriel Rosetti, and elderly former explorer and adventurer Edward Trelawney. They’re all very different from each other, and due to some of the conflict that arises, the book is surprisingly quite a bit funnier. But that doesn't make this book a comedy by any stretch. There's an unsettling scene early on when teenaged Christina's father essentially forces her to take one of the demonic statues, and sacrificing her to save himself. Many of the characters suffer hellish graveyard sequences and haunted seas. But it's not as disturbing or challenging a novel as The Stress of Her Regard.

Simon Vance is one of my favorite readers in the business, so I was sad he didn’t return here. However, Fiona Hardingham narration was nothing short of excellent. This was no small task, as she had to work to differentiate the various characters – who were often in the same place together, or whose narratives jumped from one to the other. McKee in particular was a lot of fun to listen, as was her salty old-dog take on Trelawney (and when the two of them were playing off each other, it was listening bliss). The rest of the characters felt not only like individuals, but the protagonists of their own stories under Hardingham's voice. It’s the first time I’ve listened to Hardingham narrate, but her voice was easy to settle into hearing, and I hope to hear much more of her work.

All in all, Hide Me Among the Graves is a welcome return to Powers dark, mysterious world of vampires, art, and the muse. I’d be happy to go back again if Powers found himself inspired to keep us up late at night again.

(Originally posted at the AudioBookaneers)

Full of magic and horror

A strange tonal shift from The Stress of Her Regard: this one leans into the horror aspects a lot harder, with less biography and less adventure. There are some genuinely creepy moments, though. I think if you liked The Anubis Gates as well as the previous book in this this setting, you’ll enjoy this one.

The narrator has a pleasant voice, but halted and placed the wrong emphasis so often you got the sense she was reading each line for the first time. I found it distracting.

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.