Time of Feasting

VOYA - Dorie Freebury

Victor Renquist is a young, handsome, elusive socialite, and a thousand-year-old nosferatu Master who has successfully concealed a small modern colony of vampires in New York City for thirty years. The time of "The Feasting" is upon Victor and his restless wards, who dwell in a Lower East Side Manhatttan domicile known as "The Residence." As the Feasting draws near, the nosferatu grow weary of the "modern way" of feeding from stolen hospital blood bags, and they crave uncontrollably the desire for "warm kill." As a cautious Master, Victor is burdened with the task of safely guiding his colony through the Feasting, and he cleverly plans to disguise the nosferatu overkill as that of the work of a serial killer. This ingenious deception begins to dissolve into sheer madness when arrogant Young One, Carfax, kills a high-profile ex-lover of Renquist's, leaving her desanguinated body to begin a media frenzy and reason for the authorities to investigate the Residence. With the Feasting the colony begins to unravel as Carfax indulges in a depraved killing spree, as colony members viciously turn on each other and as a mysogynistic, fanatical defrocked priest finds his divine mission in destroying the nosferatu infestation. In the midst of chaos Victor must find the power to maintain his colony as literally all hell breaks loose. This heavy, modern vampire thriller gives the reader insights into the "diverse and sophisticated" world of a modern nosferatu colony thriving in New York City. Laced with numerous historical references, The Time of Feasting also exposes the dark alternative culture of the nosferatu who feed easily and skillfully in places that welcome degeneracy and depravity of all kinds imaginable. Despite a bumpy plot and characterizations that doesn't quite give readers enough substance to sink their teeth into, focus on modern nosferatu culture in The Time of Feasting makes for a dense and intriguing read. The dark content of the novel warrants a resting place in adult collections, and will appeal to very mature readers who regularly consume adult vampire fiction. VOYA Codes: 3Q 2P S (Readable without serious defects, For the YA with a special interest in the subject, and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

Review Bloomsbury

A sylish smart vampire thriller that takes the basic rule of the genre and turns them upside down.

Musical Express New

Farren's fertile imagination has snaggletoothed bite all its own.

Kirkus Reviews

First vampire novel by sf writer Farren (Elvis and the Colonel, 1989, not reviewed) swaggers swankily and advances the genre by creating a new version of vampires' ancestry: Their creators came in UFOs, altered human DNA to fashion the new creatures, and, in their spare time, provided the inspiration for humankind's religions.

Suave, thousand-year-old Victor Renquist, the Master of the nosferatu, who live in the Residence in Manhattan, must constantly temper the bloodlust of his followers, compelling them to restrict themselves to hospital bloodbags rather than living human prey. Victor is well aware that the colony risks extermination if it goes on a wilding and leaves exsanguinated bodies all over the city; after all, when European vampire families got out of hand in 1919, they were exterminated by the Church. Victor, who has sought to protect the colony by moving in the circles of the powerful and chic, has not left the Residence for two years, having become too famous for comfort. He's appeared in People magazine and on TV, has hosted parties for Henry Kissinger, Joan Collins, Edward Kennedy, Ivan Boesky, and even Mick Jagger. He is attended by a vampire Sicilian enforcer, Lupo, who calls Renquist Don Victor and treats him as Godfather. Also on hand is wildly intemperate young Carfax, who rebels against Victor's edict on bloodletting and plots to set up his own family. To complicate matters further, the time of ritual feasting, when the colony must replenish its energies by seeking live prey, is near. Wily Victor speculates that the feasting, if properly disguised, might be seen as the work of serial killers and psychopaths—if he can just keep his impetuous fellow vampires in line. Meanwhile, he is being pursued by Gideon Kelly, a defrocked whiskey priest on a vampire-hunting mission from God, and by a tough Manhattan police detective.

The historical background offers considerable originality, while the storytelling speeds along with theatrical trumpery through predictable plot points.