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Post by Zagreus on Oct 17, 2016 2:28:25 GMT
So I just finished reading the part where Barnabas makes Willie stake Jason after he's done feeding on him, just to make sure he doesn't rise again. Oof. Brutal stuff. Like I said, the book is raw and well, written, when Willie isn't trying to bed everything female with two legs.
About three fifths of the way through now.
Since Willie Loomis Saves Collinsport seems to be down, does anybody have a handy conversion chart for character names? It's sometimes hard to keep track of who is supposed to be who, as far as the mental picture in my head of what's going on is concerned.
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Post by Trace on Oct 17, 2016 2:33:35 GMT
So I just finished reading the part where Barnabas makes Willie stake Jason after he's done feeding on him, just to make sure he doesn't rise again. Oof. Brutal stuff. Like I said, the book is raw and well, written, when Willie isn't trying to bed everything female with two legs. Oh but that's what makes this novel fun isn't it? The pure absurdity and random nature of the sex scenes, and picturing John Karlen and Jonathan Frid as participants makes for an interesting mental image! |
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 17, 2016 16:58:47 GMT
I've decided that this novel is basically if Dark Shadows were written like The Wire.
Certainly makes me look at Willie in a bit of a different light. Wish there were an audiobook of it. Wish there were audiobooks of Dreams and Labyrinth too, for that matter.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 17, 2016 18:59:12 GMT
A real nice character study for Willie, though as others have noted stuff just kind of happens in the background with little explanation. Barnabas turning human, various people dying, new cast members being introduced and sent off...
The book starts really strong, but, like Angelique's Descent, begins to flag a bit once we get into putting to print stuff that we already saw in the show.
A good, if a bit flawed, read.
I went into it thinking it was a bit of a joke, but I think after finishing I'm okay with having it on the shelf with the other Dark Shadows stuff.
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Post by Rob Morris on Oct 17, 2016 22:39:23 GMT
I can see I totally wasted my time getting the HH discussion into a separate thread.  That said, I agree with what you say. |
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 19, 2016 16:58:56 GMT
1998 - Angelique's Descent1999 - Dreams of the Dark2002 - The Labyrinth of Souls2004 - Hawkes Harbor- 2006 - The Salem Branch
- 2011 - Dark Passages
- 2013 - Wolf Moon Rising
- 2016 - Heiress of Collinwood
On to The Salem Branch! I'm opting to listen to the audiobook on this one, as it will allow me to get on with other things while enjoying the book. It's about twelve hours long, but if it's anything like the Angelique's Descent reading, the last half / full hour is a preview of the next book. So I don't think this will take me more than a full week to finish, if that. Chapter One does a good job of going over the major points of the 1971 sections of Angelique's Descent (sans finding the journal), covering Barnabas burnign the Old House due to Angey's hauntings, his cure of vampirism, the Old House's new owner, and the fact there's a new vampire out and about, killing the work crews. Now. Miranda du Val. I... okay I don't know a whole lot about this character. I know from the wiki that she's Angey, or will be reincarnated as Angey, and is a witch, and the student of Judah Zachary, who is a character I do know a little about, or at least the exploits of his possessed head. Chapter 2 reveals that she was taken in from living in the woods with the natives into the New England town by a Reverend Collins and his family... Being introduced to a new host of characters. Reverend Collins, Judah Zachary, Deodat Larson (who's master is the Reverend, not sure if that means he's a slave or a servant), Miranda is apparently an indentured servant herself. Miranda's fiance is Andrew Merriweather. Ha! Sir Isaac Collins is trying to buy Miranda's farm... the good Reverend is apparently Isaac's brother. Will have to add that name to the family tree after I look up how to spell his name in the book proper. (super quick edit, it's Reverend Benajah Collins) Anyway, going to stop taking notes and just let the story play on for a bit. |
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 19, 2016 22:57:49 GMT
While I'm enjoying this, and the did so as well the reading of Angelique's Descent, I really wish there was some background music or sound design of some sort.
I wonder how the past sections and the present sections are going to overlap. I wonder if Isaac himself is going to show...
Getting a kick out of Barnabas' love for his car.
Hmm, I'd been imaging Miranda as being played by Lara Parker, but she's school aged in this. Does this gel with her appearance in the show?
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 20, 2016 3:48:54 GMT
So, I'm in the middle of chapter six, but, quick aside, who would play each of the new parts in hypothetical audio/television versions of these stories?
For Angey's Descent... let's see, you'd need young Angelique, her mother, her father, a lot of slaves and nearby townsfolk...
So far for The Salem Branch you'd need someone to play Jacqueline, someone to play young Miranda (presumably the same actress as Jacqueline), Lara Parker would play Toni, I assume Christopher Pennock would play worker Jason Shaw, you'd need the Reverend Collins and his wife (actually, the wife hasn't been seen 'on screen' yet, but I assume she shows up at some point), you'd need the other young girls in town, and townsfolk, the natives.... big cast.
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Post by Trace on Oct 20, 2016 4:09:41 GMT
On the TV show, Miranda is played by Lara Parker. She's dressed like a Puritan, and they don't reference her age.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 20, 2016 17:20:46 GMT
SO I'm a little over a third of the way through. I've been switching back and forth between the audiobook and the dead tree version as and have just finished up chapter 10. Good stuff so far. There's some rough and raw parts, but I suppose I shouldn't surprised, after some of the stuff in the other DS novels I've read so far.
Enjoying the past storyline with Miranda, while the cast of characters initially sounded pretty big, there's only a few major players and the rest amount to silent extras. The Reverend, Judah, Miranda, Andrew, a couple of the school girls. Judah sounds right vile. The girls are in a bit of trouble, and one of them's dead (so okay more than a bit of trouble). Miranda just wants to live long enough to get to move into her farm, though perhaps she shouldn't have mixed such a strong love potion to give to Andrew, considering the text describes him as not just bending her over, but the tree she was clinging to as well in his effort to get under her skirts. She seems to think having a husband will mitigate the witch accusations. We'll see how that works out for her, shall we?
As for the present day stuff, it's interesting to see how Barnabas is taking to being human. All the little things he didn't have to worry about before, like fatigue, or getting enough sleep, really irritate him. He's convinced Toni is Angelique, again. He's taken David for an education visit of Salem, where we begin to intersect a little bit as David is taught about his family history, which we can see unfolding in the past storyline. Barnabas comes across the grave of Miranda's unnamed baby (oh, I guess Andrew's a good shot) and Miranda herself (hung as a witch, okay yeah we knew that wasn't working out for her). I suspect the local seance (avoid if you don't want to travel back in time!) will be how our two storylines intertwine at some point. It's interesting, I'd kind of assumed there would be some time travel shenanigans earlier in the book to bring Barnabas and co back into the past, but we're almost halfway through and still building up to it.
We've heard mention of Toni's daughter Jacki, but we haven't actually met her yet. We got to watch second hand as Toni sprung her from Windcliff in the dead of night, and caught glimpses of her int eh crowd. I'm assuming we'll get introduced to her eventually.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 22, 2016 0:17:05 GMT
This Judah guys is a total asshat. And that's putting it mildly. He's a disgusting example of a human being, if he even still qualifies. The book doesn't pull it's punches with the depictions of the witch trials and the things that happened to the accused.
I sometimes forget the contemporary things that happened during the "present" sections of the show. The hippies in the woods reminding Liz of Charles Manson and his ilk was a moment of "oh, right, that was around then, wasn't it?" for me. Adventures in Salem and back at home in Collinwood are interesting. Trippy nights with the hippies, vampire attacks, Barnabas learning to deal with a living aging body, and all that entails, Julia seems ill, Roger is indignant, and David deals with the fickle hearts of young women.
I feel sorry for the baby, knowing that it only lives a few days from the headstone Barnabas found earlier in the book.
So Miranda is definitely supposed to be the spitting image of Jackie, so they should be played by the same actress. Lara Parker would play Toni, as she's the spitting image of Angelique. Someone mentions that Barnabas looks like Benajah, so Frid would double up for the The Reverend Collins. Which of the contemporary actors would play the other past parts?
I like how Quentin's just been hanging around in the background taking Toni on dinner dates. I wonder if Selby would have played any of the Salem parts.
Only about 60 pages left.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 22, 2016 1:50:13 GMT
As is often the case with these things, I hadn't intended to just sit down and finish the rest of it, but that's just how it played out.
A ghoul attacks the hippie camp, there are deaths, the police get involved, Jason Shaw blames the Collineses and vows revenge. Barnabas and David race off to Salem to see that Toni and Jackie are okay, David reading off some disturbing reports from Windcliff about his new girlfriend.
AND THEN THE SEANCE FINALLY HAPPENS
Toni and Barnabas are flung back to the 1690s, just in time for Miranda to give birth int he prison and be lead to the hangman's noose. Her child lasts all of a couple days before dying in her arms on the way to the gallows, and she opens it up to cast a blood curse on those who have wronged her. Heavy stuff.
Back in the present day of 1971, Jason Shaw has attacked the house, the vampire's on the loose, Jackie lifts her curse because Barnabas and Toni went to the past to save her, as Miranda, and Julia is revealed to be the new vampire, having been infected whilst curing Barnabas. Which worked, but now he's dying. So she just turns him back into a vampire. Weeeeeee
Oh and Barnabas is a little pissed off that Toni likes Quentin more than him. I'm not sure why he's surprised by this, Quentin did spend the whole of the book taking her out on dates, and we established that Angelique/Miranda reincarnated was Jackie instead, so...
Eh whatever.
We end the book with three happy couples. Julia/Barnabas, Quentin/Toni, and David/Jackie.
And now that we've thoroughly explored the past lives of Miranda Angelique Cassandra Jacqueline du Val Bouchard Collins Blair Collins Harpignies, it's time to get lost in the 1920s I suppose. Going to be setting Dark Passages aside for the moment and diving right into Wolf Moon Rising so that I'm all caught up when Heiress of Collinwood drops in a couple weeks.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 25, 2016 6:19:12 GMT
OHMAHLAWD I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT HEIRESS OF COLLINWOOD
So pumped for new Vicki adventures!
Have started Wold Moon Rising. Quentin is apparently not a nice person when his painting is missing. I'd forgotten that Barnabas had moved it during the last book. They just sort of glossed over that at the time, but it's having far reaching consequences now. Toni is regretting her decision to stick with Quentin, and is terrified of his anger as she searches for the painting for him. Julia's a bit out of sorts, still in the "honeymoon" phase of being a vampire. Barnabas, on the other hand, isn't at all happy about being a vampire again. Apparently the happy ending of the last book was very fleeting. Barnabas has nailed Julia in her coffin, bolted the door to the room, hidden the door, and thrown the keys away. Damn man, that's cold. And then, for good measure, he's gone and destroyed Quentin's painting. Barnabas is certainly in a "fiddlesticks everything and the horse it rode in on too" sort of mood.
David and Jackie seem to be doing well. So, uh, one out of three couples ain't bad, I guess. Yeah, we'll go with that. I sometimes forget that David's like fifteen or sixteen in these, and so does everybody else it seems, still treating him like the little kid who tried to murder people for assigning him homework.
We're still in the setup chapters, though I gather with the painting destroyed things are going to heat up rather quickly.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 27, 2016 19:15:54 GMT
This book is going slower than the prior two, or at least it feels like it. There's no jumping back and forth between time frames, and we're focussing on a larger cast of characters. Instead of just focussing on Barnabas in the present and Angie/Miranda in the past, we're firmly in the present and getting chapters from Barnabas, Jackie, David, and Quentin's viewpoints, among others. I'm only about a fourth of the way into the book and it still feels like setup, even though plenty has happened, just because we're getting the story trickled in from varying viewpoints.
Jackie has done things to the local bullies I could only dream of when I was getting beat in school. David is helping her look for the missing painting. Barnabas is stalking around and has bitten Toni. Quentin's transformed and is prowling the woods, having attacked Barnabas. There's coyotes about, and they might be under his leadership now, as the alpha, or they might be under one of Jackie's spells. There's ghosts in the pool house (was this in the show? It gets mentioned a few times in Rainey's novels, but he also added in a footman/driver for Roger that I'm fairly certain was never in the show). ANd someone claiming to be Blair's brother has shown up at the door.
Fun times.
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Post by silverednickle on Oct 29, 2016 17:04:50 GMT
Well Harry Johnson did become the family chauffeur during the Adam/Eve plot line, though he's rarely around and usually seen helping Mrs. Johnson clean or making trouble.
There's no pool house in the show, though House of Dark Shadows and the 1990s remake both have David playing around in an old pool house. Tracy goes for a bit of an eventful swim in the abandoned pool in Night of Dark Shadows.
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 29, 2016 17:08:58 GMT
This chauffeur of Rogers is in both Labyrinth (set after the show) and Dreams, which is set right after the 1795 arc, so who knows.
And apparently the pool house is from House of Dark Shadows, so I can see it showing up if Parker and Rainey were using the vhs/novelization as a reference when writing their earlier books... and now it's just a regular feature of the Collins estate.
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Post by coldlazarou on Oct 30, 2016 16:32:24 GMT
I love the spooky old pool house, especially in HODS for the bit where {Spoiler}
Vampire Carolyn has risen from the grave and is stalking David
Brrr! |
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 30, 2016 19:50:13 GMT
Amazon's got a "look inside" preview of Heiress up, that consists of the opening chapter or so of the book. First Person from Vicki perspective. ARGH I need to get through the latter two thirds of Wolf Moon Rising so I'm ready for this!
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 30, 2016 20:21:03 GMT
This preview on Amazon is fairly lengthy. I'm three chapters in so far, and it's still going o__O
I don't want to post discussion and spoilers so I'm just taking some notes so far, but I have noticed what could be some nods to BF continuity in there in a few unexpected places. I'm so torn between continuing on and stopping and finishing Wolf Moon and just waiting for my physical copy of Heiress to arrive next week. Argh, I better do the latter, in case anything from Wolf Moon ends up being pertinent to Heiress.
I like the first person perspective though. I wonder if they're going to have Lara do the reading again, or if they're going to try and tempt Alexandra to step into the sound booth for it...
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Post by Zagreus on Oct 31, 2016 6:47:42 GMT
OKAY! I have just finished a binge read of the remaining 312 pages of Wolf Moon Rising.
Oof. Lot to get through. And I'm on a new keyboard. This may take me a bit.
First and foremost... I'm going to assume Quentin just flat out lied when explaining his origins to Liz. He gave her a very abridged and edited version that made him out to be a victim of circumstances rather than the sordid and corrupt past he really has. Remember, he's trying to convince her to run away with him.
We finally get an explanation of the Toni/Jackie situation and exactly how that relates to Angelique. I can only assume that Jackie went off to school with David. It's mentioned in.... The Ghost Watcher, I think(?), that David's been sent off to school by then, so one can just assume she went with him. I'm also assuming that Angelique reclaimed some semblance of physical form in the next few years so she could go gallivanting off as Casandra with Tony Peterson. Mayhaps she's possession Antoinette's corpse? And I'm going to assume Blood Dance takes place after Quentin leaves in the 1929.
Not sure how I feel about Barnabas basically raping Antoinette for an extended period of time. I get that the book was trying to show how he's more than just immortal and bloodsucking now that he's a vampire again, and get a bit of that early Barnabas back, what with the flagrant murder and the being an evil bastard, but he still cares for and protects the family, and even tries to retrieve and fix the painting so that Quentin won't have to go through the werewolf thing.
Blair was a crazy fiddlesticks. Not sure how I feel about him. I haven't actually met his brother in the show yet, but I'm given to understand that he had a bit more charm about him, and was less of a psychopath.
The 1929 bit. Hrm. Klan stuff, prohibition, bootlegers, moonshine, rum running, flappers, movie stars... So Liz and her father were in the Hollywood scene in the past? I assume this is some of the blending of the actors' pasts with the characters. In this case, I can only assume that Joan Bennett is mixed in with Liz, especially considering the films Quentin lists off that she's been in. I see, reading up on Joan Bennett, that Lara Parker even borrowed the jealous husband shooting her "lover" in the groin, though the years of everything have been shifted a little. Speaking of the fudging of the years, I've read some other forum members (Trace?) that the generally year of this last tryst between Quentin and Liz would, roughly, with around when Victoria would be born... which has some... interesting implications, to say the least. I wonder if that's going to be followed up on in Heiress.
Jamison being a part of the Klan is... I'm not sure how I feel about that. He seems a generally good-natured if bitter, man in the vague 1920s setting of A Collinwood Christmas. And the speakeasy thing is kind of, that's not really bad per se, and has a certain romanticism to it. I can see a wealthy high society family like the Collinses hosting big alcoholic parties like that. But thenm there he is, hooded up with tommy gun giving blood and thunder speeches and leading a public lynching. Jesus Christ. It's just...
This novel seems to have a lot of examples of basically good people doing really horrible things. Like, even just the kid helping out his dad with the animal control job is one of the school bullies and is idly wondering about having to hold Jackie down after school so the head bully can have his way with her while at the same time feeling bad about spraying the spiders and living up to his father's expectations. It's an interesting look at everyone's dual natures, which I guess goes hand in hand with three of the main characters of the book leading double lives as "evil" supernatural creatures.
I'm not really sure how to wrap this up. I enjoyed it a lot. It was different from the prior two books, which had a structure of a framing sequence following Barnabas as he learned about and occasionally interacted with the story set in the past. And the past bits were fully fledged stories with structure. The majority of this one, on the other hand, is set in the "present" of 1972. Yes, a chunk of the middle of the book has David and Jackie whisked back to 1929, but we still alternate with the present with our dual focus on Barnabas and Quentin in addition to the youngsters, and the past stuff comprises one horrible evening and then we return everyone to the present, where the majority of the remainder of the book stays. The different viewpoints was interesting, and meant we sometimes covered the same ground from a couple different vantage points, meaning the action was sometimes slow to unfold, but that also lead to a certain amount of suspense.
It was good. I liked it.
I'm excited for Heiress :3
It's going to be a long nine days, waiting for it to arrive.
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