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Post by andydecker on May 28, 2020 9:53:24 GMT
Nigel Bennett & P.N.Elrod – Keeper of the King (Bean Books, 1998, 400 p.) Once he was Lancelot du Lac, Knight of the Table Round. She was an incarnation of the Goddess. Now they are a pair of ethical vampires.
In Gaul at the dawn of the Middle Ages, Lord Richard was his family's fighting man, its invincible champion – until some force twisted his blade from his hand. And then he met the Lady Sabra, who soothed his wounds, healed his pride – and turned him into a vampire under her tutelage. His new job: Keeper of the King of Britons. True to Sabra's wishes, the English king was keeping civilization alive. Richard's object in unlife: keep the king alive at all costs.
But that was then – now it's the 1990s and Richard's job isn't over. Working as a highly-paid anti-terrorist consultant to the Canadian government in Toronto, he is drawn into a deadly race to save his Lady, and mankind with her. His object all sublime? Same as last time: The Holy Grail.
If "a pair of ethical vampires" doesn't send you screaming for the hills, what does? This back-text is a misfire on so many fronts, why read the book if the backstory is explained in detail already? I never was a fan of Elrod's cosy vampires, but this collaboration of the genre-writer with a genre-actor is not an oddity. There are others. Christopher Golden and Amber Benson (the Tara in Buffy) come to mind, who did an equally tame trilogy called Ghosts of Albion for Del Rey. Benson at least kept on writing and published a few urban-fantasy novels about tv-compatible witches and stuff, while Bennett worked mostly in Canadian TV. His vampire master LaCroix was the best thing on the vampire tv show Forever Knight, so why not try to capitalize on his role? To be fair, if you can put the Hallmark treatment of noble vampires and the shameless advertising with Bennett as LaCroix on the cover behind you, the larger-than-life Romance style of writing and the kitchen-sink plunder of favourite and sanitized Myths – if King Arthur would come back tomorrow, I guess he would put a lot of people to the sword first, starting with his fans -, this can be entertaining in parts. Or it could have been. Unfortunately it doesn’t deliver on the action, even the blood-sucking is tame, and the few sex-scenes where Dun shags his goddess can't save it either. 300 pages instead of 400 would have been more than enough. In one part the back-text is right, though. It is the 1990s, and this kind of mass-market paperback could only be possible in this era. |
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Post by cauldronbrewer on May 28, 2020 11:17:55 GMT
Nigel Bennett & P.N.Elrod – Keeper of the King (Bean Books, 1998, 400 p.) ... I never was a fan of Elrod's cosy vampires, but this collaboration of the genre-writer with a genre-actor is not an oddity. There are others. Christopher Golden and Amber Benson (the Tara in Buffy) come to mind, who did an equally tame trilogy called Ghosts of Albion for Del Rey. Benson at least kept on writing and published a few urban-fantasy novels about tv-compatible witches and stuff, while Bennett worked mostly in Canadian TV. His vampire master LaCroix was the best thing on the vampire tv show Forever Knight, so why not try to capitalize on his role? Even before you mentioned Amber Benson, I was already thinking that the vampire on the cover must be Spike's less-cool little brother. |
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Post by helrunar on May 28, 2020 12:59:06 GMT
Nigel Bennett was such fun on Forever Knight. His Lacroix character would have made a few arch, acid comments about this sad-sounding book, then perhaps tossed it carelessly into an open sewer.
Great comments, Andreas! I do wonder how much of this Nigel actually wrote.
cheers, Steve
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