BLOOD BROTHERS

Sixth symphony in the Necroscope series, an epic vampire cycle begun in paperback (Deadspawn, 1991, etc.) and now shifting to hardcover, with 480 pages of dense lyricism and small print in need of a guide like Frank Herbert's Dune Encyclopedia. In his Necroscope cycle, Lumley falls victim to a historical giganticism endemic among fantasy writers like Mervyn Peake, Gene Wolfe, and others who write long and lust after the vanished three- decker. Vampire hunter Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, called The Hell-lander and sometimes Dwellersire, can talk with the dead and move effortlessly through time and space. Earlier, Harry battled the near-immortal masters of the Starside, the Wamphyri, and drove what remained of them to the Icelands. The Sun now circles from Sunside to Starside, but Harry is ailing, for he himself has been corrupted by Wamphyri evil and been robbed of his ability to enter the forbidden Mobius Continuum (``Trapped in its flux, he drifted useless as a ship with neither sail nor rudder, a waterlogged hulk rocked and slowly twirled by mathematical tides and algebraic whirlpools, through straits of Pure Number where he was now innumerate''). Are the Wamphyri truly gone? No, they still live in hidden vampire caverns and, strangely refined by unclean vampire science, have come forth to prey on innocent humankind. Harry's twin sons inherit some of his powers and may save mankind; but during a vampire raid, one has been snatched by a flying monster, and the other must find him so that together they may fight the revived evils of the Wamphyri. Frenzied deliria! Hair-tearing madness! Death in high purple! But just the draught that Lumley's faithful have ordered. Next: The Bloodwars!