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The Renquist Quartet #4
Underland
Victor Renquist, centuries-old master of a small colony of Nosferatu, has been "recruited"-forcibly-by an undercover branch of the National Security Agency, Paranormal Operations and Research. They need his help. It seems that certain members of Hitler's Third Reich escaped to a secret world below Antarctica, taking with them some very advanced technology. Human teams have failed to infiltrate the base, and Renquist is the NSA's last chance.
The team is small: Renquist; his right-hand man, Lupo; an extremely unorthodox hardline NSA operative named Jack Coulson; and Thyme Bridewell, a failed NSA brain-control experiment originally intended as Renquist's lunch. What they find in Underland taxes even Renquist's supernormal powers. The quondam Nazis have some very powerful allies -- the Dhrakuh, a race of sentient reptiles from the dawn of time. Their goal is nothing less than the conquest of the entire world.
To make matters worse, Renquist is hampered by some throwbacks from his own race and by the unexpected arrival of one of his own colony members, Julia, together with Philipa, a darklost whom Julia has led through the Change into Nosferatu.
The future of civilization hangs in the balance.
The team is small: Renquist; his right-hand man, Lupo; an extremely unorthodox hardline NSA operative named Jack Coulson; and Thyme Bridewell, a failed NSA brain-control experiment originally intended as Renquist's lunch. What they find in Underland taxes even Renquist's supernormal powers. The quondam Nazis have some very powerful allies -- the Dhrakuh, a race of sentient reptiles from the dawn of time. Their goal is nothing less than the conquest of the entire world.
To make matters worse, Renquist is hampered by some throwbacks from his own race and by the unexpected arrival of one of his own colony members, Julia, together with Philipa, a darklost whom Julia has led through the Change into Nosferatu.
The future of civilization hangs in the balance.
448 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
Mick Farren
71 books87 followersFarren was the singer with the proto-punk English band The Deviants between 1967 and 1969, releasing three albums. In 1970 he released the solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus which also featured Steve Peregrin Took, John Gustafson and Paul Buckmaster, before leaving the music business to concentrate on his writing.
In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.
Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.
In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.
To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.
Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.
Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.
Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.
In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.
He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.
Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.
In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.
To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.
Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.
Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.
Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 21, 2011
A bland meandering hodgepodge of "wacky" ideas does not a novel make.
I cannot think of a single thing to recommend it. The entire book has the feeling of being strapped into a VERY slow-moving kiddie-ride at a cut-rate Disneyland,... no Knottsberry Farm while "bizarre" characters from David Icke's imagination flail at you in cartoony slowmotion with looped sound effects. I could practically hear the deadlines flapping outside his door and his agent on the phone screeching for "PAGES!" as he typed with out sense or style.
Clumsy, literal, and a hackwork in the worst sense. Avoid.
I cannot think of a single thing to recommend it. The entire book has the feeling of being strapped into a VERY slow-moving kiddie-ride at a cut-rate Disneyland,... no Knottsberry Farm while "bizarre" characters from David Icke's imagination flail at you in cartoony slowmotion with looped sound effects. I could practically hear the deadlines flapping outside his door and his agent on the phone screeching for "PAGES!" as he typed with out sense or style.
Clumsy, literal, and a hackwork in the worst sense. Avoid.
September 29, 2014
I'm sticking with my thought that Mick Farren's Victor Renquist quartet really is for those who don't like vampires. By that I mean the crowd who wants sparkly, or brooding love lorn, angst ridden vampires to moon over.
Guess that covers a lot of ground and authors.
Renquist doesn't hide his distaste (except for their blood) for most humans, and the nosferatu we meet besides Renquist are the same. To paraphrase Spike from Buffy we're little happy meals on feet. They are predators, admit it to themselves and any human they meet, and they're quite happy about that. Oh, they keep their numbers small to keep from attracting vampire hunters, as in his 1,000 year life Renquist himself has survived more than one vampire pogrom.
What Farren does better here than in the last volume is that he avoids massive repetitious exposition dumps. There are exposition dumps, but they are not repeating the dump that came before.
Farren maintains his love for the kitchen sink approach. while tieing up some plot threads from two of the previous books, we get NSA-FEMA fueled conspiracies, hollow Earth theory and Nazis living inside the hollow Earth. Plus, ancient astronauts.
Which goes to what I've enjoyed about much of this run. Excluding the first book, Farren seems to grab a few concepts that normally wouldn't mix well and mashes them up in a story that I sometimes finds more amusing than suspenseful or horrifying. That doesn't mean it's not fun.
Its just not your normal vampire tale.
Guess that covers a lot of ground and authors.
Renquist doesn't hide his distaste (except for their blood) for most humans, and the nosferatu we meet besides Renquist are the same. To paraphrase Spike from Buffy we're little happy meals on feet. They are predators, admit it to themselves and any human they meet, and they're quite happy about that. Oh, they keep their numbers small to keep from attracting vampire hunters, as in his 1,000 year life Renquist himself has survived more than one vampire pogrom.
What Farren does better here than in the last volume is that he avoids massive repetitious exposition dumps. There are exposition dumps, but they are not repeating the dump that came before.
Farren maintains his love for the kitchen sink approach. while tieing up some plot threads from two of the previous books, we get NSA-FEMA fueled conspiracies, hollow Earth theory and Nazis living inside the hollow Earth. Plus, ancient astronauts.
Which goes to what I've enjoyed about much of this run. Excluding the first book, Farren seems to grab a few concepts that normally wouldn't mix well and mashes them up in a story that I sometimes finds more amusing than suspenseful or horrifying. That doesn't mean it's not fun.
Its just not your normal vampire tale.
November 29, 2021
If Tom Clancy wrote fantasy, it would be something like this. The author rolled a bunch of the best conspiracy theories into this tautly plotted vampire thriller. I wouldn't call it horror, exactly. You could compare it to some of Brian Lumley's work, although this is witty and fun where Lumley was stodgy and took himself too seriously.
Somewhat dark, especially near the beginning, though as the story progresses, the killing becomes more brisk and businesslike ("this guy is blocking my next move and he's a terrible person anyway, so I'll dispatch him with a headshot.")
My only complaint is I realized this is the 4th book in the series and there is a lot of backstory.
Cthulhu is in this, in a very small way. I gather one of the earlier books was about the struggle against Cthulhu.
Somewhat dark, especially near the beginning, though as the story progresses, the killing becomes more brisk and businesslike ("this guy is blocking my next move and he's a terrible person anyway, so I'll dispatch him with a headshot.")
My only complaint is I realized this is the 4th book in the series and there is a lot of backstory.
Cthulhu is in this, in a very small way. I gather one of the earlier books was about the struggle against Cthulhu.
April 11, 2012
Unique, creative, and interesting, but slightly disjointed.
I appreciate Farren's depiction of vampires as horrors rather than sparkly, creatures of wonder. Yes, there are those who are enraptured by them, but in a soul-lost de-humanizing way. The plot is definitely bizarre and relatively dark as Farren tends to go for. The writing is generally good. However, there are a lot of loose ends. There are characters introduced that just fall off the map. There are major plots you get only hints of, but no resolution from. Farren spends a lot of time developing certain characters and their motivations, but then does nothing with them. I felt I was watching a pilot episode - introduce too many characters, hint at a lot of plot threads, to get a taste of a world, but not enough time to go too far with any of it. He did resolve the primary plot in a anti-climactic sort of way, but I still put down the book thinking ...so what? If this were part of a series, I might let it pass. But even as part of a series, I would expect more.
Interesting read, but not a great one.
I appreciate Farren's depiction of vampires as horrors rather than sparkly, creatures of wonder. Yes, there are those who are enraptured by them, but in a soul-lost de-humanizing way. The plot is definitely bizarre and relatively dark as Farren tends to go for. The writing is generally good. However, there are a lot of loose ends. There are characters introduced that just fall off the map. There are major plots you get only hints of, but no resolution from. Farren spends a lot of time developing certain characters and their motivations, but then does nothing with them. I felt I was watching a pilot episode - introduce too many characters, hint at a lot of plot threads, to get a taste of a world, but not enough time to go too far with any of it. He did resolve the primary plot in a anti-climactic sort of way, but I still put down the book thinking ...so what? If this were part of a series, I might let it pass. But even as part of a series, I would expect more.
Interesting read, but not a great one.
September 23, 2010
Overall, Underland was another solid entry by Farren. I really like the mythos he works with and the writing is generally solid. But I absolutely hated the end of the this book. It felt like in the last ten pages it just threw all logic out the window because he needed to wrap it up.
I think anyone into vampires will definitely enjoy these books. Just be warned that they are long, and that because Farren is working hard to build such a rich world the plot of the individual novel sometimes gets pushed aside for too long.
I think anyone into vampires will definitely enjoy these books. Just be warned that they are long, and that because Farren is working hard to build such a rich world the plot of the individual novel sometimes gets pushed aside for too long.
July 12, 2024
full review here:
https://jamesgenrebooks.blogspot.com/...
Really fun book, despite the really absurd premise.
https://jamesgenrebooks.blogspot.com/...
Really fun book, despite the really absurd premise.
June 17, 2009
I guess this was an okay conclusion to the series. It tied up ALMOST all the loose ends that were floating through the first three books, although it left enough strands that Farren can pick them up later (such as what happened to The Lamia, or how did the Tlacique survive so long by itself in the desert, and such). I just felt this book was really rushed.... everything seemed to mesh together too neatly, and there really wasn't any characterization or even action. It wasn't bad... but it wasn't that great either.
August 19, 2013
A frustrating read. Farren spends half the book setting up the plot described on the back cover, which is apparently not really enough to drive a full-length novel. I suspect what he was really doing was setting up a future conflict between the main character and the shadowy government organization which forceably recruits him, but since he never followed that idea up before he died, we get a book that seems to take forever to get to the actual plot. Farren's fiction is usually much better than this.
May 5, 2015
First of all this book is part of a series, and it's not the first book. No where on cover - front or back does it indicate this. For this reason I'm docking one star from my review and will not likely buy any other books in the series. I really don't think it's too much to ask.
The book was ok. It had a pretty good premise and back ground, but it wasn't executed very well. And the ending was well...anticlimactic to say the least. A lot of potential here though. Just not done very well.
The book was ok. It had a pretty good premise and back ground, but it wasn't executed very well. And the ending was well...anticlimactic to say the least. A lot of potential here though. Just not done very well.
September 6, 2007
Vampires...check. Weird city inside the earth...check. Alien technology...check. Nazis...
Nazis?
Why does it always have to come down to Nazis? Dammit, Mick, you were doing so well-- your vampires are cool, power-hungry, yet with a vestige of humanity so we can be sympathetic-- why'd ya have to resort to f---ing Nazis?
Nazis?
Why does it always have to come down to Nazis? Dammit, Mick, you were doing so well-- your vampires are cool, power-hungry, yet with a vestige of humanity so we can be sympathetic-- why'd ya have to resort to f---ing Nazis?
April 3, 2011
This was one of those titles you grab in desperation before boarding a cross-country flight (which I did). You know, look at the cover art, read the back, pay the cashier, and dash to your gate. Possibly the strangest plot line. Ever. Nazis, vampires, and underground cities with a decidedly steam punk vibe.
I'll admit that it's a fun read, but not much else.
I'll admit that it's a fun read, but not much else.
July 20, 2015
For the record, I did not choose this book dust jacket. I in no way have any part to the Nazi Program. I am not racist.
It is one of the weaker books in the series and I felt like the author was reaching for ideas instead of writing about them. The other books in "The Victor Renquist" series are great and among my favorites.
It is one of the weaker books in the series and I felt like the author was reaching for ideas instead of writing about them. The other books in "The Victor Renquist" series are great and among my favorites.
November 14, 2007
read 03.08.07
slow going. put it aside for a while and read some other books before finishing it.
slow going. put it aside for a while and read some other books before finishing it.
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May 4, 2014Click here to find it in the catalogue.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews