The Delicate Dependency

eBook, 521 pages

English language

Published Nov. 30, 2018 by Valancourt Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-941147-24-5

(1 review)

They are cool to the touch and alluringly beautiful in their ageless youth. Their laughter seduces, their brilliance beguiles. They guard the secrets of science and history, and the answers to the mysteries of life and death lie within their vastly superior knowledge. In centuries past, they were known as the Illuminati. They are the vampire.
Dr. John Gladstone, a scientist in Victorian London, is thrust into their world after his carriage runs over a young man of angelic beauty named Niccolo. When Niccolo kidnaps Gladstone’s child and vanishes, the doctor must go in pursuit, with the help of his daughter, Ursula, who is enticed by the lure of eternal life, and Lady Hespeth, whose demure exterior hides a dangerous obsession. Why are the vampires taking children, and what is the connection to Gladstone’s experiments with a deadly virus? And how can he possibly prevail against a race of immortal …

They are cool to the touch and alluringly beautiful in their ageless youth. Their laughter seduces, their brilliance beguiles. They guard the secrets of science and history, and the answers to the mysteries of life and death lie within their vastly superior knowledge. In centuries past, they were known as the Illuminati. They are the vampire.
Dr. John Gladstone, a scientist in Victorian London, is thrust into their world after his carriage runs over a young man of angelic beauty named Niccolo. When Niccolo kidnaps Gladstone’s child and vanishes, the doctor must go in pursuit, with the help of his daughter, Ursula, who is enticed by the lure of eternal life, and Lady Hespeth, whose demure exterior hides a dangerous obsession. Why are the vampires taking children, and what is the connection to Gladstone’s experiments with a deadly virus? And how can he possibly prevail against a race of immortal beings with power and intelligence infinitely beyond his own?

Michael Talbot’s The Delicate Dependency (1982) is often cited as one of the best vampire novels ever written. This highly anticipated new edition, the first since the book’s original publication, includes a new foreword by Jillian Venters.

2 editions

epilys reviewed The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot

The good and the bad

5 stars

Content warning Spoilers about book plot and ending

Wow, what a book. Not a single word of prose is wasted, and there's a lot of it too. Wonderfully written. As with a lots of things in life, novels are about the journey and not the destination. Not that the ending is bad, per se. However there were a number of plot inconsistencies (not plot holes!) in the supposed conspiracies and mystery investigations along the way that I kept wondering why they were never mentioned or pointed out. For example, the main characters get kidnapped and held prisoners for a large amount of the book's story by a specific vampire, des Esseintes, who according to the main character's accomplice, Lady Hespeth, was mentioned by the vampire kidnappers (a certain Lodovico) of the main character's daughter. The vampire simply denies having talked to the kidnappers for many centuries. Why was his name mentioned then? The main character does not press on this.

Later, it's revealed that Lady Hespeth's story about her son also being kidnapped was false, because she's actually a vampire hunter (that was also proved a ruse later on) without children. The main character simply accepts this and does not question how or why Hespeth knew the name of des Esseintes if there was never any kidnapper of her own kid. Clearly Hespeth led the main character to des Esseintes. But this is simply accepted.

This is not the only inconsistency of the book's plot, just the most annoying one I noticed.

Despite that, I sincerely enjoyed reading this. Knowing that nothing human can be perfect, I give this ten out of ten not because it's perfect, but because it's masterly executed.

Subjects

Vampires
Mystery
Horror