Jeffrey Sackett - Blood on the Impaler

[andydecker]

Jeffrey Sackett – Blood of the Impaler (Bantam Books, 1989, 340 pages)



Cover: Gary Smith
Cover found on the Net. Thanks to the original scanner.

This is one of a hand full of horror novels Jeffrey Sackett wrote at the end of the 80s. He took some standard themes and gave them a sometimes original spin.

This is a sequel to Stoker's Dracula. In the prologue the Voivode Vlad is contemplating his last battle against the Turks which will bring him death, while watching two peasants getting impaled and three Turkish ambassadors getting their hats nailed to their head. Then he kills a child for the devil, who appears only as a voice in his head and makes him an offer he can't refuse.

(In the current Ebook-version there is a different, much tamer prologue. At least one of the other Ebook versions of Sackett's novels has also some explicit sex scenes edited out.)

In contemporary times Malcom Harker is a young man living in New York. He is living in the house of his grandfather Quincy with his sister and her husband. It is a very catholic household, but Malcom is kind of drifting in his life, working as a bartender. Then he gets a bit ill after he tries to bite a potential one-night-stand in the neck.

His grandfather tells him that he is the child of Mina Harker and that Dracula is a real story. All the Harker's are cursed due to Mina drinking Dracula's evil blood. They have forever Dracula's blood in their veins. The only way to keep this curse in check is to lead a very religious life. Rachel's and Malcom's father didn't and became a murderer.

Malcom thinks this is all a load of nonsense, still he gets obsessed about the family history and the "real" manuscript of Dracula before Stoker changed most names and places. With his girlfriend and his best friend he travels to Europe to either prove or disprove the story. So he finds Lucy Westenra's tomb and resurrects her. After that things become really bad for him and his family.


After the historical prologue the novel slows down for maybe too long. The author takes his time to establish his characters and then puts a lot of work and pages to transform Stoker's novel into a documentary. But at least he tries to make this plausibe and not just declaring 'It's a true story' and that's it like so many other writers did.

The second half is much more suspenseful. The idea to resurrect Lucy (what could go wrong?) is well done, and while Malcom tries to get rid of his curse, Dracula's blood gets stronger in his veins and he kind of re-lives Dracula's history, his atrocities and his fight against the Turks. There are a lot of well researched details about largely forgotten parts of European history and an interesting spin on the classic novel.

Blood of the Impaler still works after all those years and could be described as a forgotten classic.

[goathunter]

Centipede Press published a signed limited edition of Blood of the Impaler last year.

www.centipedepress.com/horror/bloodoftheimpaler.html



Unsigned copies are still available from Centipede. Signed copies can be found at Ziesings and on eBay.

[goathunter]

I conducted Jeffrey Sackett's first interview back in 1990. A second interview by Robert Morrish was included in the Centipede edition.

www.goatley.com/lights-out/authors/sackett-interview.html

I highly recommend his books.

[andydecker]

Jan 3, 2024 2:57:21 GMT goathunter said:

I conducted Jeffrey Sackett's first interview back in 1990. A second interview by Robert Morrish was included in the Centipede edition.

www.goatley.com/lights-out/authors/sackett-interview.html

I highly recommend his books.

Interesting. Do you happen to know which version Centipede used? As I have seen and wrote the Ebook version has a different  prologue. Problem is I only have the translation which can be different for a lot of reasons.

Seems all the Ebook versions are edited. I looked up Candlemas Eve which at least has lost the sex scene in the prologue. Again I have only the translation and not the original. But it is one thing to edit some sentences or even pages, which can do any editor, but a new prologue like in Blood of the Impaler can (normally) only be done by the writer. So it is possible that Sackett did the changes himself. In this case all complaints about different versions are senseless.

[goathunter]

Jan 3, 2024 10:00:07 GMT andydecker said:

Interesting. Do you happen to know which version Centipede used? As I have seen and wrote the Ebook version has a different  prologue. Problem is I only have the translation which can be different for a lot of reasons.

Seems all the Ebook versions are edited. I looked up Candlemas Eve which at least has lost the sex scene in the prologue. Again I have only the translation and not the original. But it is one thing to edit some sentences or even pages, which can do any editor, but a new prologue like in Blood of the Impaler can (normally) only be done by the writer. So it is possible that Sackett did the changes himself. In this case all complaints about different versions are senseless.

I hadn't realized there were differences in the editions, but I'll try to look today to see which prologue is in the hardcover edition.

I do know that any changes in the ebooks were done by Jeffrey Sackett himself. I'm the one who brought him to the attention of Crossroad Press. He considers the ebooks the definitive books as he originally wrote them (suggesting that the original Candlemas Eve scene was an editorial "suggestion", IMO).

You may have noticed that there's no ebook for Mark of the Werewolf. Instead, there's Lycanthropos, which is the original version of Mark of the Werewolf with Nazis as the bad guys. The editors at Bantam didn't like the Nazis and made him rewrite the book to use biker gangs or whatever they are (it's been a long time since I've read Mark). Sackett never liked those changes, so when he did the ebook, he published his original manuscript with the Nazi story intact.