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Title: The Gathering Dark (The Shadow Saga, Book 4) by Christopher Golden ISBN: 0-441-01081-4 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 24 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Out Of The Shadows, Into The Sunlight
Comment: The Gathering Dark
Chris Golden came into his own writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer novels, but his body of work is considerably larger than that. From teen thrillers like Body of Evidence to horror fiction as serious as the Shadow Saga, the trilogy on which The Gathering Dark is based. While not entirely consistent, he often manages to combine good writing with some ingenious twists on the typical horror story.
In the alternate universe of The Gathering Dark, the world is recovering from a spiritual revolution that pitted the vampires against the increasing corruption of the Catholic Church. Given the powers to prevent the encroachment of evil, the church had abused those abilities to their own advantage. When vampires discovered that they had been brainwashed into believing that they would wilt in the sunshine and could not tolerate the holy they rose in opposition to the church and brought down the whole house of cards.
Unfortunately, The Gospel of Shadow, the grimoire that contained the secrets of preventing demonic incursions, was lost during the struggle. Now the weakened church struggled to undo the damage, vampires are hunted by the United Nations and the world trembles on the edge of a long descent into darkness. Now Peter Octavian, no longer a vampire but a powerful mage is all that that is left that can prevent an evil power from drawing the earth into its realm.
Octavian is aided by an unlikely crew. Nikki, a rock singer, Keomany, confectionary and earth witch, and Jack Devlin, a priest who cannot stand what his church has become are the humans. Kurumaku, an ancient samurai, and Allison, who hunts her own kind, are the vampires. This rag tag crew must come face to face with a creature that Octavian has named the Tatterdemalion. An evil from another dimension entirely that is sucking whole cities into a deadly world of its own contriving.
Like The Shadow Saga before it, The Gathering Dark is Chris Golden at his best - writing a complex tale that is part horror story and part a journey of discovery for its characters. Golden, by completely changing the vampire model creates a framework that is interesting on its own, with the kind of implications that invite even more volumes in the series. The Gathering Dark stands well on its own, but just enough loose ends remain to continue the weave. With the reader to reap the benefits.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Shadow Saga enters a new dimension
Comment: Bram Stoker Award winner Christopher Golden brought a new twist to the vampire legend in his series of books dubbed The Shadow Saga. In The Gathering Dark, set ten years after the events of the third Shadows Saga novel, a much-changed Peter Octavian finds himself reluctantly facing the biggest challenge of his life. By this time, the whole world knows that vampires, or Shadows, exist and that Peter was once their leader. He taught them the truth of their existence, exposing all of the lies that the Catholic Church had long ago instilled in their minds. A great war was fought between the Shadows and a secret society inside the Church, leaving many vampires dead and the Church itself all but destroyed. In the process, the Gospel of Shadows was destroyed, robbing mankind of its only means for keeping previously unimaginable monsters and demons at bay. As this novel begins, the world of man comes under attack, with city after city ostensibly sucked into a layer of hell itself. The reconstituted church in America is working feverishly to regain the knowledge contained in the lost Gospel of Shadows, but earth's best and only hope in this new unimaginable war is Peter Octavian.
Having forsaken his vampire existence, Octavian is now a normal human being. His desire for a human life, though, has left him wanting something, and he has retreated into a solitary existence. He is far from defenseless, though, as his history plus a tough thousand-year sojourn in Hell have made him the world's most powerful mage. As dire events begin to unfold, Peter joins with a remarkable set of individuals to save the world from total destruction at the hands of powerful demons assaulting the earth in ever-growing numbers. His two greatest allies come to be Kuromaku, a vampire brother, and Keomany, an earthwitch whose powerful bond with the natural magic of earth itself proves invaluable. Father Jack Devlin, a priest who goes against the wishes of his bishop to aid Octavian in his quest to rid the world of demonic infection, is a singular character of great importance, while two very special human females give the Shadows reason to fight for a world which still sees vampires as an abomination. The presentation and evolution of the characters is well done, filling these pages with a sense of humanity without which such a battle as that described herein is meaningless.
I have to admit that it took a while for The Gathering Dark to light a fire in my imagination. The early parts of the novel are sometimes slow of pace and shift back and forth between characters in a sometimes disconcerting manner. The form of the demonic manifestations is also fairly extreme and hard to accept. Then you have Peter and his allies finding nebulous ways to enter the hidden realms and return with their lives intact. The magic that Octavian often calls into being is wholly unbelievable but certainly mage-worthy, while the remarkable abilities that Golden gives to his vampires pushes the envelope much farther than I would prefer to see it go. Add to this an earthwitch who can use Mother Nature herself as a force of protection as well as a potent weapon, and you have an extreme fantasy hard to embrace.
The second half of the novel recharges the batteries of Golden's fiction quite nicely, though. It no longer matters how unbelievable the situations are at this point, as you become ever more drawn into worry and care for these characters risking their lives and souls for a fight they may well not be able to win. The last hundred pages represent an extended climax of events, with Golden turning the crank of the suspense meter slowly but steadily. Emotional conflict blends with painful endurance and unparalleled bravery to capture your heart and mind, and each page gets easier to turn as you yearn for the ultimate resolution to this unholy drama.
Looking back on the book as a whole, I do not consider The Gathering Dark a great read, as it exhibits a number of weaknesses that made it difficult for me to fully commit myself to it. Golden does imbue his vampires with a complexity you won't find in many a vampire novel, but this can be a double-edged sword. As much as I like vampires of a most exotic and unusual breed, some of the abilities of Golden's Shadows just exceed my mind's willingness to blindly accept what I am reading, and this diminishes my enjoyment of the novel. Still, there is certainly originality and literary talent contained within each of Golden's pages, and any fan of vampire fiction will doubtless appreciate the chance to explorer the decidedly dark world of this author's creation.
Rating: 4
Summary: A very adequate continuation.
Comment: As a very big fan of Christopher Golden's Shadow Saga, I was extremely excited about a fourth book coming out in the series. Now, having reviewed both books one and three of the original trilogy on Amazon previously, I will not mention any of the details of the story lines contained within, but I will make a note about the reading time. Let me first state that I will be the first to admit that I am not the fastest reader, so to say that I finished book three in less than a week is, for me, a phenomenal pace. After reading book three, I immediately began book four "The Gathering Dark." Although a very good book, it took me almost three weeks to get through this one, with the first two weeks on about the first third of the story. The beginning of the story was a bit disappointingly slow, but that should be expected since the fourth book in the series had to take a different path than books one through three, with the main character no longer being a vampire/shadow, but instead, being the world's most powerful mage. So why do I still give this book four out of five stars? Mainly because after the initial slow character development and plot outlining, the book drastically improved. I finished the last two thirds of the book in just over a week because I did not want to put it down. The storyline was strong enough that I will be (and I believe many readers will be) disappointed if there is not a book five. The story was left with a definitive, yet open ending that could easily translate into another volume of the series. Golden's Peter Octavian character was once again redefined through strong character development, and character of Allison Vigeant was beautifully explored. The other surviving characters from Golden's previous "Of Masques And Martyrs" also were used effectively and developed at the same time making them much more than just coat-tails from the previous story. And of course the descriptions of the very formidable enemy was just enough to be disturbing, yet not so much that the mystery was given away. Although not as good as book one or three of the series (Although that would have been VERY hard to match), "The Gathering Dark" is an extremely good follow-up novel that deserves a read.
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Title: Of Masques and Martyrs (The Shadow Saga, Book 3) by Christopher Golden ISBN: 0441005845 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Angel Souls and Devil Hearts (The Shadow Saga, Book 2) by Christopher Golden ISBN: 0441005780 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Of Saints and Shadows (The Shadow Saga, Book 1) by Christopher Golden ISBN: 0441005705 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Prowlers by Christopher Golden ISBN: 0743403649 Publisher: Simon Pulse Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Seduced by Moonlight (HAMILTON, LAURELL K) by Laurell K. Hamilton ISBN: 034544356X Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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