Thursday, September 29, 2011

All Places That Are Not Heaven: Tales of Adrian Talbot and Genevieve de Monet

All Places That Are Not Heaven: Tales of Adrian Talbot and Genevieve de Monet


Anne Fraser; Inanna Arthen (editor)

By Light Unseen Media, Sep 21 2011, $13.99

ISBN: 9781935303312



“Tales of Adrian Talbot.” The collection contains five fascinating tales starring the amoral “Brat Prince of Toronto” Shakespearean actor Talbot. Four of the entries from the mid 1990s involve Jake Fowler, who vampiric folklore Professor Talbot meets at a lecture he gives in which the only other attendees are four associates of the speaker (“Rosedale Vampires”). In the “Vampire Blues”, Jake feels Talbot stalks him, his roommate Max Scheer and his girlfriend Grace Webb; that is until he meets Melantha the singer. The other two (“Vampire Conventions” and Acting’s In the Blood”) continue to focus on the relationship between the self proclaimed master vamp of Toronto and the grad student. The final Talbot entry written in 2000 ("Speak Easy") has Adrian falling in love in 1928 New York with monster Darby Sullivan.



“Tales of Genevieve de Monet.” The collection contains two fascinating tales (written in 1997 and 2006) starring the savior of Gideon Redoak. Almost five centuries as a vampire, Genevieve has a major unidentified threat that has killed her offspring. Her ghoulish cousins and her vampiric children cannot tell her what is coming for her in “Watch and Ward.” French dragoon Jean de la Mare and Genevieve de Monet meet on a battlefield in Germany where he is dying. She offers him a cleaner death, but he chooses to be her Undead Guardian in “A Babe in Arms.”



Although the two stars possess different ethics, the seven tales are entertaining dark urban fantasies.



Harriet Klausner

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