Necroscope V: Deadspawn

By: Brian Lumley

Narrated by: Michael Troughton

Length: 18 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

There's a maniacal murderer on the loose, brutally slaughtering young women with a ferocity that rivals that of vampires Harry Koegh has spent his life combatting. The Necroscope's been asked to solve the crimes...asked by the dead spirits of the madman's victims.

Harry cannot turn down a request from the dead...even if it costs him his soul. In the climactic battle with the vampires, mankind prevailed and purged the vampires from earth - thanks to Harry, his team of psychically-gifted spies, and Faethor Ferenczy, long-dead "father" of the world's vampires, who betrayed his own kind.

But Harry's alliance with Faethor has a terrible cost - Harry's very humanity is under attack from the vampire evil coiled in his mind!

©2003 Brian Lumley (P)2019 David N. Wilson

A fine ending.

Started Dec 10 2019
Finished Jan 3 2020

Firstly the narrator because everyone is wanting to know: he’s fine. YES some pronunciations are weird, voices inconsistent a bit but he does say Vamfeari this time at least and his voice is smooth enough and not dull enough to find yourself bored.
I never found myself going “ugh” while he was narrating.

There’s still sound effects but they don’t take you out of it in my opinion.

A fine finale to a good series.

This one took me a bit to get done. Not sure if I was suffering from vampire burn out but this one seemed slower than the others.

Harry Keogh: Necroscope, is on his perhaps, final mission. Hunting down a nefarious necromancer.

Like the other books in the series the depiction of violence and gore are stomach churning. Maybe that’s why it took me a while. The others have plenty of violence and disturbing images but there’s something about the way Necromancy is depicted here that irks me. Not bad by any means but prepare yourselves.

Ancient vampires play a role in this as well.

The first half starts off strong with a dull second act. Acts 3 and 4 pick up the pace finally and then the conclusion is handled quite well when I didn’t actually think it would be. Lumley has a weird habit of just quickly wrapping up his books but this one did it nicely.

This is the conclusion for the Necroscope series. There’s two spin off series and some other one offs but are unnecessary I’ve heard.

The spin offs add to the lore so if you want to keep going with this universe you can. However they aren’t on audible YET.

I might check them out but for now I am satisfied with a great vampire series that is something you should sink your teeth into if you like espionage, vampires and just bizarre fiction.

please get next in series

Loved it. Please continue to add to this series. One of my favorites of all time

Best series ever

Finally audible has this series. Love these books.
Keep them coming. Can’t wait for the next one

Great Series

I had a good friend suggest this author and book series to me. I can say it is one of my favorites, interesting take on one of the "big questions" what happens after? and I like the different perspective on ESP, and vampirism. Just a great book series, and a great book in general.

Rushed?

A much improved performance from the narrator, goofy sound effects are mostly gone, pronunciations are mostly on point and it is overall enjoyable to listen. If you struggled with necro 4 due to narration, 5 is a vast improvement.

The story however, now being able to hear it at my leisure seems rushed. The Johnny found arc is contrived and goes on for far too long, especially considering the previous villains' abilities compared to Johnny's, he should have been a 2 chapter toady buddy at best. The wamphyry are developed, albeit they find God and Jesus in this book which is a bit of a crutch on BL's part but there is some loose justification to the concept. Nitpicking withstanding, a fine listen and a grand improvement on necro 4.

5 out of 5 stars

one of the best books in series loved these books waiting for next book in series dont keep us waiting

like the others...

Great story and and good narrating. ALMOST as good as the first narrator. Good job to all, again.

The perfect ENDING...to the BEGINNING

So much heart pounding action in this conclusion (or is it?) of Harry Keogh's Necroscope journey.

Brian Lumley first 5 Necroscope novels changed my vision of vampires...FOREVER!
And to think...these first 5 tales SPAWNED 8 more colossal adventures still to be told.

Michael Troughton's performance was very well done.

How Freaking Clever

Love this series. How the hell does the author come up with such fantastic imagery? The epilogue...wow!!!

A rushed entry in the series and poor narration

I remember this particular book in a better light. When I read it the first time in '91 I thought it rivaled book one for best in the series. Listening to it now brings some of Lumley's more annoying writing habits into glaring focus. Every character uses the same slang and terms and phrases, he repeats himself a LOT and feels the need to rehash details over and over, and he over-explains every tiny insignificant detail. "As you know, I'm a Telepath, so..." and "I'm Wamphyri, so...." This tends to just get on your nerves after hearing characters tell each other this bit over and over. If Shaithis is talking to the Ferenc, why does he feel the need to remind him that he is Wamphyri and then explain the lusts and emotions of being such? I think he knows, already.

All in all it feels like Lumley was just trying to get to the end of the Harry Keogh saga. The ending feels rushed and there is way too much filler (the over-explaining and repeating himself, flashbacks, and recapping what has happened before). We've had 4 books of E-Branch's escapades, and each time he brings back a character we all know about, he has to go back and explain what that character's powers are and how they work. David Chung: "As you know, I'm a sympathetic locator, so I can take an item owned by the blah blah blah blah...." Seriously, we know already. We don't need 4 paragraphs of him explaining it to the people he has worked with for years!

Those are my complaints. You know, though, I still love this series, and I adore Harry and the ESPers. The Wamphyri are suitably terrifying and I'd love to see this series made into a movie but I doubt that will ever happen. It's time has passed I guess. I'm still going to buy the "Vampire World" books when they release on audio. I actually enjoyed those a great deal more than the original series.

About the performance.....
The narrator was very inconsistent with accents and character vocalizations. Shaithis was at first all gurgling and clotted sounding, but then in the last chapter he sounds like the Ferenc. Harry's voicings were just all over the place, and Karen did NOT sound like a Wamphyri lord should sound. She came across as a sniveling cowardly little girl. I did not like the narration at all. Also, I doubt a Hell's Angel from Detroit has a cockney accent, and some dude working in a Harley shop in Detroit most definitely does not have a British accent. Those were the most egregious violations to me. His Russian accents were pretty poor as well.

I've listened to books narrated by Michael Troughton before and they weren't this bad. I don't know if he was just trying to get it over with or was distracted or whatever. I was just very disappointed with the performance.