The Revenants

Author: Geoffrey Farrington

Cover illustration: Willi Gray  

This slim, sharp novel is a major achievement in its field.

Kim Newman

A superior vampire novel.

Time Out

Writers like Geoffrey Farrington and Anne Rice are the leading way forward in the development of modern fantasy.

The Fantasy Review

The Revenants is a beautifully constructed tour de force of Gothic horror.

Robert Irwin

Jaded horror fans who might dismiss British author Farrington's 1983 cult book as just another vampire novel would do well to take a second look now that it's making its American debut. As Kim Newman notes in his introduction, the tale draws its inspiration from pre-Dracula vampire fiction and as such its Byronic hero, John LePerrowne, a member of the Cornish nobility, experiences what it's like to become a "revenant" in ways that readers will find refreshingly novel. Horrified by the excesses of his fellow revenants, to whom the rest of humanity are naught but cattle and playthings, LePerrowne seeks solace in the view that he is, like all predators, merely a part of Nature, but his exemption from death, to which all things in Nature are subject, ultimately denies him even that balm. Instead, he comes to realize that he and his kind are forever alienated from other life, even from each other. This is no escapist power-fantasy but rather a Gothic bildungsroman that draws its strength from the hero's tragic struggle to retain his humanity. It should appeal greatly not only to devotees of the genre but to anyone interested in what makes us human.

From Publishers Weekly

The ghoulish misdeeds and conflicted psychology of the undead are memorably explored in this classic supernatural thriller, published in England in 1983 and previously unavailable in the US.

In the terse, atmospheric opening pages, an unnamed narrator finds a partially charred manuscript in the vicinity of an abandoned country house in Cornwall that has mysteriously burned to the ground. It's the "Narrative of John Richard Le Perrowne," born in 1830 to middle-agedparents, sickly and reclusive throughout a lonely childhood?and the chosen victim of his ancestress Helena, a vampire whose seductive presence leads
John into a thrilling new anti-world of empowerment and glamour. But the initiate vampire retains a conscience, and Farrington expertly contrasts his reluctant surrender to the lure of the night with the amoral Helena, a coven of inordinately bloodthirsty fellow creatures, and the young farm girl (Elizabeth) who becomes John's creation, far outdistancing him in calculated villainy. The story is exactly as baroque and lurid as it needs to be, and its most effective set pieces (John awakening in bed to find Helena lying beside him; a feverish dream that's prelude to an equally appalling reality) have a truly cinematic intensity. Farrington's prose is
pitched agreeably high, and his protagonist's increasingly fearful intuitions are expressed with vivid emotion and mordant irony ("Death . . . seems much sweeter when you know you cannot have it"). And the closing
sequences build impressively, as Perrowne discovers the truth of the ancestral secret that has shaped his fate, travels to Ireland in search of the "Master Revenant" rumored to be the father of them all, undertakes a
climactic "journey to Hell," and experiences a grotesque parody of theResurrection. Thus summarized, it sounds egregiously flamboyant; in fact, it's smashingly effective.

Far superior to most of Anne Rice's empurpled Gothicism, and, quite possibly, the best vampire novel since Dracula.

Starred review in Kirkus

A spare, haunting, humane and complex novel that's one of the best takes on a wrongly despised subgenre.****

Eugene Bryne in Venue

This is a wonderful vampire novel.At least, it is a vampire novel in that it concerns itself literally with lots of blood sucking revenants, but it is far from being a mere gore-fest or chiller-filler. Geoffrey Farrington's debut novel is a complex and thoughtful discourse on the human condition. If you like, it's just that the humans involved aren't strictly humans at all, but vampires.
Much of the time the experience of John LePerrowne, the novel's central character, and his Revenants associates, can be read as an allegory for human experience: the moral dilemmas they face concerning death, God and morality face us all.
So when John tells fellow Revenant Elizabeth.'I know what it is ..To know we may take at will whoever and whatever we choose. The power is exciting.But do you not see? This power, it does not make us masters of humanity, it makes us slaves. While we indulge it we are not even masters of ourselves', he could just as easily be considering that old human debate of decadence vs temperance as that old vampire chestnut of to go on a murderous rampage or to kill only when it is absolutely unavoidable.
The humanising of our central character is not only clever, but also a major achievement. LePerrowne is essentially a vampire cursed with a conscience trying to learn about himself and his place in the world, and in that sense a parallel can be drawn with with the likes of JD Sallinger's Holden Caulfield or Hermann Hesse's Harry Haller as much as with Bram Stoker.
The Revenants comes to a close with a sustained and breathtaking sequence that delves into Johns's soul and brings us out somewhere round the other side, a piece of writing as arresting as it is dark and dreamlike. Indeed such a powerful and darkly imaginative modern novel with such serious ideological punch is rare, welcome and in this case, a bit of a thriller.

Ian Beetlestone in The Leeds Guide

Now, how often do you get the chance to read a masterpiece of gothic horror that you had previously missed? You lucky people. First published in 1983, Farrington's tale of a vampire with a conscience slipped by the best-seller lists long before Anne Rice was making your duvet tremble. Now re-published, the tale of John Le Perrowne and his family curse is a tale worth wrapping.

Brian Hennigan in The Herald's Paperbacks of the Year

As Kim Newman notes in his introduction, the tale draws its inspiration from pre-Dracula vampire fiction and as such its hero, John LePerrowne, who experiences what it's like to become a 'revenant'in ways that readers will find refreshingly novel. This is no escapist power-fantasy but rather a Gothic fiction that draws its strength from LePerrowne's tragic struggle to retain his humanity.It should appeal greatly not only to devotees of the genre but to anyone interested in what makes us human.

Buzz Magazine

In his introduction to the 2001 edition of this criminally neglected novel Kim Newman calls it “a major achievement in its field.” He’s right. Even amid the current glut of vampire fiction (which unfortunately only appears to be growing steadily gluttier) Geoffrey Farrington’s THE REVENANTS remains a fresh, compelling and altogether brilliant take on vampire lore.

At once gritty and hallucinogenic, it’s told from the point of view of John Le Perrowne, a young man living in his family’s country estate in the late 19th Century. He’s haunted by a ghostly woman John identifies as his long dead great-great-great aunt Helena. He also suffers from some unexplained malady that, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is in fact an early symptom of vampirism.

Precisely how and why John was vampirized isn’t revealed until late in the book. Far more interesting are the details of his new state of being and how he adapts to it; this involves a literal journey into death, followed by a return to (eternal) life as a blood sucker, or, as these beings prefer to call themselves, revenant.

Helena teaches John how to live as a revenant, with an emphasis on morality and responsibility. She implores him to be stealthy in his hunting, and not to kill those whose blood he so ecstatically drinks. The episodes of blood drinking described here are redolent of the writings of Thomas de Quincy and other proponents of 19th Century drug literature in their sense of hallucinogenic delirium: “I was soaring, hurtling through immeasurable aeons and my body had no form but was mist on the winds of endless time, drifting to some nameless destination that might never be reached.”

On Helena’s advice they decamp for London, it being densely populated and so a more appropriate hunting locale than the country. Here John falls in with a mini-society of revenants who practice necromancy under the guidance of a far-off master vampire capable of transmitting his consciousness across great distances. These other revenants, unfortunately, don’t share Helena’s moral stance, and have no scruples about killing people.

The morality of his condition is something John has to face after he unwisely turns a young woman named Elizabeth into a revenant, and she goes on to become disturbingly bloodthirsty--the opposite of the more principled Helena. The crushing loneliness of a revenant’s existence is another problem confronting John, and an especially pressing one.

The book’s final third grows quite Lovecraftian, with John learning some dark truths about his family lineage and embarking on a search for the master vampire (this section also directly recalls the climactic passages of Michael Talbot’s THE DELICATE DEPENDENCY, published a year prior to the present novel). Yet the brooding menace of the earlier pages is fully sustained in a novel whose scope, ambition and imaginative richness are virtually without parallel.

Fright.com

If you want a true gothic horror novel, Revenants is for you. It’s a vampire story set before vampires were sparkly or even sexy. The vampires in Farrington’s world are ruthless killing machines living in violent decadence and believing themselves to be better than humanity, whom they consider to be at best, prey and at worst, mere playthings.

Enter John LePerrowne, a reclusive nobleman whose family hides a dark secret. John has been haunted since childhood by a recurring nightmare in which a demonic figure captivates him. When John meets his alluring ancestor, Helena, he knows that she is the figure from his dreams, and what’s worse, that he is her next target. Dark family secrets are the core of this novel, and having a vampire ancestor is sadly just the tip of the iceberg for John. If horror novels with guts and gore are your thing, you can’t go far wrong with Revenants either. The vampires, especially Elizabeth, are unutterably blood-thirsty and cruel.

Told in the span of a century as John uncovers the truth about his family as well as the nature of vampire and their place in the world, Revenants is steeped in Gothic language and imagery. There is a creeping terror that follows John with each new horror that he uncovers.

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