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The Renquist Quartet #2
Darklost
Los Angeles--City of Angels, city of dreams. But sometimes the dreams become nightmares.
Having fled New York, Victor Renquist and his small group of Nosferatu are striving to reestablish their Colony in Los Angeles. They have become a deeper, darker part of the city's nightlife. And Hollywood's glitterati are hot on the scent of a new thrill, one that outshines all others--immortality.
But someone, somewhere, is meddling with even darker powers, powers that even the Nosferatu fear. Someone is attempting to summon the entity of ancient evil known at Cthulhu.
And Renquist must overcome dissent in his own Colony, solve the riddle of the Darklost (a being brought partway along the Nosferatu path and then abandoned), and combat powerful enemies to save the world--of humans!
Having fled New York, Victor Renquist and his small group of Nosferatu are striving to reestablish their Colony in Los Angeles. They have become a deeper, darker part of the city's nightlife. And Hollywood's glitterati are hot on the scent of a new thrill, one that outshines all others--immortality.
But someone, somewhere, is meddling with even darker powers, powers that even the Nosferatu fear. Someone is attempting to summon the entity of ancient evil known at Cthulhu.
And Renquist must overcome dissent in his own Colony, solve the riddle of the Darklost (a being brought partway along the Nosferatu path and then abandoned), and combat powerful enemies to save the world--of humans!
Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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 - 12 of 12 reviews
June 17, 2009
Modern day vampires take on an upstart religion who tries to summon C'Thulhu. HOW CAN THIS BE BAD?!?!?
June 28, 2012
Ok, this was my favorite of this series - because Vampires vs Cthulhu? Especially a head vampire who KNOWS it's utterly silly and wrong that he's being shoved face-first into a battle with Cthulhu? You HAVE to love that kinda cynical, snarky nonsense. Because it plays deadpan and serious, and WORKS. It's not MEANT as a joke, but the black humor just plays out that way. Farren is a good writer. I still remember this book with a lot of fondness 8 years later.
March 6, 2017
This author never met an adverb, adjective, or descriptive phrase he didn't like. Typical example: "As far as these idiot kids were concerned, instead of a blond, beautiful, and a hundred times more stylish version of themselves, they were confronted by a towering, bat-winged, bare-breasted, she-devil from Rock & Roll Hell, eight feet tall, with pale coiling serpents for hair and eyes that glowed like windows into the Ring of Fire." This quote picked from a random page. Any random page contains run-on sentences and verbiage like this. 57 words. Even with 2 entwined (simple) plots, I think the 470 page book would have amounted to no more than 100 pages.
This author must have been relying on word count instead of book sells for his income. And where was the editor? Missing in action.
This author must have been relying on word count instead of book sells for his income. And where was the editor? Missing in action.
December 7, 2017
The second Victor Renquist novel works well as a stand-alone book. Farren’s fun loving vampires are unliving in Los Angeles, allowing the author to take pokes at his usual targets: cops, rockers and Hollywood. His method of alternating scenes between the nosferatu colony, a darklost (someone caught between human and vampire), and their antagonists, a cult trying to call up H. P. Lovecraft’s Ctulhu, is engaging and makes you sympathize with, to be honest, a pack of vicious killers. There’s more than a few shades of grey here.
August 1, 2018
I think that this was one of the hardest books to read. I felt like he ate a thesaurus for breakfast and filled the book with the regurgitation. I lost the point in many paragraphs. Story concept made me really excited to read it, but I really couldn't chew through all the nonsense to find it.
September 7, 2021
This was...interesting. More than a bit long-winded in places, but the characters made of for that. Definitely a different take than I've read before on vampires, i.e Nosferatu as they're called, here.
P.S. - Awful cover in my opinion.
P.S. - Awful cover in my opinion.
April 5, 2024
Full review here:
https://jamesgenrebooks.blogspot.com/...
While the plot looks cheesy as hell, the book itself is a hell of a lot of fun to read, and held up better than I remember it being when it was first released.
https://jamesgenrebooks.blogspot.com/...
While the plot looks cheesy as hell, the book itself is a hell of a lot of fun to read, and held up better than I remember it being when it was first released.
December 30, 2021
I got this book from Arc and I decided to read it around Halloween.
I heard it was supposed to be about Vampires are saving humans from the Great Cthulhu,but I lost interested and I don't known what it was going on. So I DNF'ED it.
I heard it was supposed to be about Vampires are saving humans from the Great Cthulhu,but I lost interested and I don't known what it was going on. So I DNF'ED it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 14, 2024
DNF. There was a time I my life where I could have finished this, but the majority of the book was name dropping and glorification of late 80's early 90's Hollywood debauchery.
December 4, 2011
As someone who is pretty much burned out on certain horror tropes of the past decade, notably vampires and zombies, I had people recommend Mick Farren's vampire books to me. While the first in the series was pretty much a straight horror read, albeit one that established the basic rules for Farren's 20th century vampires, I found Darklost not only to be a quicker read but in many ways a more enjoyable one. A darklost is a human who has had their blood taken by a vampire, but not turned into a vampire or killed. But, the book deals very little with the two darklost we meet in the course of events. Instead, I think this is one of the books where Farren started to build his metafiction reputation.
The biggest threat the vampire colony is facing upon its move from NYC to LA is Renquist's mourning over his lover's destruction, and that a new age cult is trying to bring Cthulhu across. Darklost was written in 2000, which I think we can say is before Cthulhu became everyone hack horror writer's plaything, or deus ex machina.
The book crosses over from horror into a science fiction and action movie hybrid. Renquist, at a 1,000 year+ in age, is not only the colony's master, but the one who's dream are the most tied to the race's DNA. While it is a relatively large exposition dump it is in one of Renquist's dreams that we get more knowledge about vampire history and how it is linked to Cthulhu.
It appears that not only were the vampire warriors created by aliens ruling the Earth 15,000 years ago, but that the alien masters knew the vampires were on the verge of rebellion. To quell the rebellion the masters brought in another of their servants Cthulhu.
While very little more than that is revealed about their joint history Renquist, a man who cares little for average humans, decides that Cthulhu cannot come across. At the same time he has to deal with colony politics.
Running concurrently is the story about the Apogee cult, which I considered a thinly veiled broadside at cult religions like Scientology. While most of the APogee characters are caricatures, Orton Ghast is given a little depth. As essentially the cult's number three man (well it could be argued number one) it was he who figured out how to turn crackpot theories and beliefs in a multi-million dollar enterprise. Orton is the most human character in the book.
Among the colony vampires Lupo continues to grown on me. There is just something about a vamp who used to make his living as a mob hitman, and his stoic demeanor that I find charming and amusing. Lupo is the type who could either sit down and have a drink with you and then kill you afterwards.
I feel the story began to take on a tongue-in-cheek approach as it progressed, but not in a bad way. Yes, I know I should read the original Dracula and Interview With a Vampire as vampire fiction classics (and someday I will) but for now I'll content myself with Farren's nosferatu (as they prefer to be called) and his metaficton underpinnings.
The biggest threat the vampire colony is facing upon its move from NYC to LA is Renquist's mourning over his lover's destruction, and that a new age cult is trying to bring Cthulhu across. Darklost was written in 2000, which I think we can say is before Cthulhu became everyone hack horror writer's plaything, or deus ex machina.
The book crosses over from horror into a science fiction and action movie hybrid. Renquist, at a 1,000 year+ in age, is not only the colony's master, but the one who's dream are the most tied to the race's DNA. While it is a relatively large exposition dump it is in one of Renquist's dreams that we get more knowledge about vampire history and how it is linked to Cthulhu.
It appears that not only were the vampire warriors created by aliens ruling the Earth 15,000 years ago, but that the alien masters knew the vampires were on the verge of rebellion. To quell the rebellion the masters brought in another of their servants Cthulhu.
While very little more than that is revealed about their joint history Renquist, a man who cares little for average humans, decides that Cthulhu cannot come across. At the same time he has to deal with colony politics.
Running concurrently is the story about the Apogee cult, which I considered a thinly veiled broadside at cult religions like Scientology. While most of the APogee characters are caricatures, Orton Ghast is given a little depth. As essentially the cult's number three man (well it could be argued number one) it was he who figured out how to turn crackpot theories and beliefs in a multi-million dollar enterprise. Orton is the most human character in the book.
Among the colony vampires Lupo continues to grown on me. There is just something about a vamp who used to make his living as a mob hitman, and his stoic demeanor that I find charming and amusing. Lupo is the type who could either sit down and have a drink with you and then kill you afterwards.
I feel the story began to take on a tongue-in-cheek approach as it progressed, but not in a bad way. Yes, I know I should read the original Dracula and Interview With a Vampire as vampire fiction classics (and someday I will) but for now I'll content myself with Farren's nosferatu (as they prefer to be called) and his metaficton underpinnings.
May 23, 2010
Here's my stupid blog review. It has hyperlinks and protocols and such:
http://piegun.blogspot.com/2010/06/da...
Darklost is the second book in the Renquist Quartet, and it competently continues the bizarre – almost ridiculous – story of a modern day Nosferatu colony.
The first book, Time of Feasting, was set in New York City, but at the conclusion of the book they colony was forced to flee in the face of an undead (zombie isn’t quite the appropriate term) army. Darklost finds our lovable heroes in sunny L.A. where they adopt Brandon Wales (think Marlon Brando) as one of their own, fight crooked cops, and… something else…
Oh, that’s right. They go head to head with the Apogee (think Scientology). It turns out that Apogee’s head dude is pretty bad at summoning other worldly entities into our universe. I say “bad,” because he actually CAN summon non-corporeal beings… He just can’t control them once they get here. And this time he’s hard at work bringing across the most powerful of uber-powerful beings: Cthulu.
So far the first half of the Renquist Quartet has been very entertaining. I highly recommend the series to fans SF/Vampire mythologies. The series so far has flirted with absurdity, but are so well-executed they never feel cheesy or campy.
http://piegun.blogspot.com/2010/06/da...
Darklost is the second book in the Renquist Quartet, and it competently continues the bizarre – almost ridiculous – story of a modern day Nosferatu colony.
The first book, Time of Feasting, was set in New York City, but at the conclusion of the book they colony was forced to flee in the face of an undead (zombie isn’t quite the appropriate term) army. Darklost finds our lovable heroes in sunny L.A. where they adopt Brandon Wales (think Marlon Brando) as one of their own, fight crooked cops, and… something else…
Oh, that’s right. They go head to head with the Apogee (think Scientology). It turns out that Apogee’s head dude is pretty bad at summoning other worldly entities into our universe. I say “bad,” because he actually CAN summon non-corporeal beings… He just can’t control them once they get here. And this time he’s hard at work bringing across the most powerful of uber-powerful beings: Cthulu.
So far the first half of the Renquist Quartet has been very entertaining. I highly recommend the series to fans SF/Vampire mythologies. The series so far has flirted with absurdity, but are so well-executed they never feel cheesy or campy.
January 22, 2012
This was a huge disappointment after the first book. Still not a terrible read but don't go into it thinking its going to great like the first.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews