The Bloody Red Baron (Anno Dracula)Kim Newman
Titan Books, April 2012
ISBN: 978-0857680846
A brand-new edition, with additional novella, of the critically acclaimed, bestselling sequel to Anno Dracula. Written by popular novelist and movie critic Kim Newman, The Bloody Red Baron takes the story into the 20th century.
The Bloody Red Baron is the follow up to Anno Dracula--set in the same world nearly 30 years later--and like the first book it is filled with literary and historical characters, this time from the early twentieth century. In this alternate universe the War of the Great Powers in Europe is also a war between the living and the undead.
Driven from England, Graf von Dracula rises to commander-in-chief of the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary, fathers a species of German vampire aristocrats, and becomes ringmaster of Baron Manfred von Richthofen's Flying Circus: a group of night-flying vampire aces. Strange experiments involving the Red Baron take place at Chateau du Malinbois, and the British vampire squadron, Cundall's Condors, must discover just what the Germans are up to.
Newman's protagonists in this novel are Edwin Winthrop, a young intelligence agent drawn to become a vampire but unwilling to go the length, Kate Reed, a radical journalist who became a vampire 30 years ago and helped send Dracula packing out of England, and Edgar Poe, hired by Dracula to write the glorious biography of Baron Manfred Von Richtoven. While Winthrop and Reed risk their lives to find out exactly what the Bloody Red Baron's secret is, Poe is ushered into the heart of Dracula's obscene experiment.
Newman is not one to let either his familiarly with history or his flair for the grotesque get in the way of his story or his characters. Dracula's experiment with the Red Baron is truly majestic, but it is Edgar Poe's perceptions and personality that carry the narrative. And, while Edwin's sleuthing unearths the monstrous and the profane, it is his struggle to overcome the monster within himself that grips the reader and keeps the pages turning.
Thanks to Newman’s skill as a writer, the gore and horror never threatens to overwhelm the narrative which manages to infuse some much needed humour into the poignancy and sacrifice. With intrigue, action and a certain detached amusement and mischief added to the heady mix Newman has again done the Dracula legend proud. His encyclopaedic knowledge of film, history and novels is unparalleled in this genre and he has again succeeded in giving readers a unique and original take on a seismic episode in history here given a horrific twist.
KIM NEWMAN is a well known and respected author and movie critic. He writes regularly for Empire Magazine and contributes to The Guardian, The Times, Time Out and others. He makes frequent appearances on radio and TV. He has won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy and British Science Fiction Awards and been nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
ISBN: 978-0857680846; ISBN10: 0857680846; Imprint: Titan Books; On Sale: 4/10/2012; Format: Paperback; Pages: 416; $14.95
