THE LAST AERIE

Second novel in Lumley's Vampire World series (Blood Brothers, 1992), or subseries, but apparently seventh in the overall Necroscope series, each volume a doorstopper. Lumley hacks out his vampire universe with a plot of inhuman complexity that few could possibly keep straight—perhaps not even the author himself. Written in surreal impasto, his introductory synopsis is a crowded symbolist canvas whose weirdly lighted details escape a larger general meaning for new readers. At this point in the cycle, Nathan and Nestor, twin sons of Harry Keogh the Necroscope, a vampire hunter from a parallel vampire world who talks with the dead and zips swiftly through time and space, are now enemies in the Sunside/Starside world. Harry was an alien who sired his twins on Nana Kiklu of the Szgany Lidesci, but the twins have matured into opposites, with Nathan fey and gifted with weird power, and Nestor strong and lusty and now set on being lord of the Wamphyri (vampires)! We last saw Nestor snatched up by a flying monster, dropped into a land of lepers, then escaping, though into hideous dreams of the future, while his lieutenant Zahar had captured Nathan and tossed him into the Starside Gate, portal to hell-lands from which no man or monster had ever returned. Now Nathan is trapped on earth and being pursued by a maniacal psychic bent on murdering him, while a band of British psychics, who first became aware of the Keoghs back in 1990 (it's now 2006), protect him. Nestor, meanwhile, though a victim of nightmares, grows ever more vile in expanding his power, now torturing the dead (with whom he can talk in deadspeak), now raping girls while sucking them dry from within. Lumley's High Purple storytelling delirium remains undimmed.