Fangland: A Novel
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
Summary from Goodreads:
An acclaimed novelist and former 60 Minutes producer grandly reinvents the Dracula epic in the halls of a certain television newsmagazine
In the annals of business trips gone horribly wrong, Evangeline Harker's journey to Romania on behalf of her employer, the popular television newsmagazine The Hour, deserves pride of place. Sent to Transylvania to scout out a possible story on a notorious Eastern European crime boss named Ion Torgu, she has found the true nature of Torgu's activities to be far more monstrous than anything her young journalist's mind could have imagined. The fact that her employer clearly won't get the segment it was hoping for is soon the very least of her concerns.
Back in New York, Evangeline's disappearance causes an uproar at the office and a wave of guilt and recrimination. Then suddenly, several months later, she's heard from: miraculously, she's convalescing in a Transylvania monastery, her memory seemingly scrubbed. But then who was sending e-mails through her account to The Hour employees? And what are those great coffin-like boxes of objects delivered to the office in her name from the Old Country? And why does the show's sound system appear to be infected with some strange virus, an aural bug that coats all recordings in a faint background hiss that sounds like the chanting of...place-names? And what about the rumors that a correspondent has scored an interview with Torgu, here in New York, after all?
As a very dark Old World atmosphere deepens in the halls of one of America's most trusted television programs, its employees are forced to confront a threat beyond their wildest imaginings, a threat that makes gossip about an impending corporate shakeup seem very quaint indeed.
Written in the form of diary entries, e-mails, therapy journals, and other artifacts of early-twenty-first-century American professional-class life, compiled as an informal inquest by a very interested party, Fangland manages both to be a genuinely-in fact triumphantly-frightening vampire novel in the grand tradition and a, yes, biting commentary on the way we live and work now.
An acclaimed novelist and former 60 Minutes producer grandly reinvents the Dracula epic in the halls of a certain television newsmagazine
In the annals of business trips gone horribly wrong, Evangeline Harker's journey to Romania on behalf of her employer, the popular television newsmagazine The Hour, deserves pride of place. Sent to Transylvania to scout out a possible story on a notorious Eastern European crime boss named Ion Torgu, she has found the true nature of Torgu's activities to be far more monstrous than anything her young journalist's mind could have imagined. The fact that her employer clearly won't get the segment it was hoping for is soon the very least of her concerns.
Back in New York, Evangeline's disappearance causes an uproar at the office and a wave of guilt and recrimination. Then suddenly, several months later, she's heard from: miraculously, she's convalescing in a Transylvania monastery, her memory seemingly scrubbed. But then who was sending e-mails through her account to The Hour employees? And what are those great coffin-like boxes of objects delivered to the office in her name from the Old Country? And why does the show's sound system appear to be infected with some strange virus, an aural bug that coats all recordings in a faint background hiss that sounds like the chanting of...place-names? And what about the rumors that a correspondent has scored an interview with Torgu, here in New York, after all?
As a very dark Old World atmosphere deepens in the halls of one of America's most trusted television programs, its employees are forced to confront a threat beyond their wildest imaginings, a threat that makes gossip about an impending corporate shakeup seem very quaint indeed.
Written in the form of diary entries, e-mails, therapy journals, and other artifacts of early-twenty-first-century American professional-class life, compiled as an informal inquest by a very interested party, Fangland manages both to be a genuinely-in fact triumphantly-frightening vampire novel in the grand tradition and a, yes, biting commentary on the way we live and work now.
This book was bloody awful!
(And, boring to boot.)
If you enjoyed Dracula, then, you will probably like this book.
(And, boring to boot.)
If you enjoyed Dracula, then, you will probably like this book.
Journal Entry 3 by book_drunkard at emmejo's Otherworldly Bookbox, A Bookbox -- Controlled Releases on Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Released 3 yrs ago (2/2/2021 UTC) at emmejo's Otherworldly Bookbox, A Bookbox -- Controlled Releases
CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
Released into bookbox.
I'm claiming this hardcover from the Otherworldly bookbox. (I admit I'm a bit prejudiced about this book because I first "read" it via audiobook, and the principal voice-actor annoyed me so much that it really put me off. I think there are valid criticisms about the story itself, but feel free to take my comments with a grain of salt, as I'm definitely biased!)
The concept is a good one - a modern-day TV news reporter goes in search of an organized-crime leader in the wilds of Transylvania, and runs into something much worse. This is a vampire story with a twist - several, in fact - among them being the method of transmission, which involves unseen images on video and barely-heard whispers in the background...
The story's told from the viewpoints of several different characters, via their journals (written, typed, audio, and/or video), a nod to the epistolary nature of Dracula.
The main character, Evangeline Harker (shout-out!), is a reporter on the trail of a story. I think the author meant her to be an updated version of Mina from Dracula, but didn't know how to merge the loving, newly-engaged woman with the ambitious television personality, and the result was that I didn't believe she'd have gotten that job in the first place.
It's tough for me to separate my feelings about the woman who narrated that character in the audiobook and the character as written, since the annoying qualities of her voice, awkward pacing, and mispronunciations made an already not-that-likeable character even less likeable. But if I ignore the whole question of whether I cared what happened to her or not, the core of the story is pretty good: dark mysterious power from the Transylvanian heights finds its way directly to the heart of the high-tech databases of a top-ranked television show, with the threat that its influence may be spread nationwide - and, soon, worldwide - via a single carefully-crafted TV segment. The growing realization among the reporter's co-workers that something's terribly wrong - especially after the reporter herself reappears after a long disappearance, under circumstances that are very disturbing indeed - is quite suspenseful, and for a while there near the end I thought it was leading to a truly dramatic climax. But it didn't keep its momentum, as far as I was concerned; meandered when it should have leaped, brought in new characters when there were already plenty on scene, and never quite hit that *moment*. The whole sub-thread about the power of death - the "vampirism" seemed to center on mass deaths throughout human history - was interesting, but, again, didn't seem to be woven into the rest of the story, just dragged out when needed. Lots of plotholes, IMO. [There was also a truly ridiculous scene fairly early on, in which the heroine makes her escape from the creepy - and not-sexy-at-all - Bad Guy; the method chosen was just bizarre and more embarrassing than distasteful. Maybe the author's private fantasies were sneaking in a bit? This was echoed in the conclusion and, frankly, it left me entirely cold.]
Again, the book may be more enjoyable than the audiobook, since one could skim through the more ridiculous bits and there wouldn't be any awkward mispronunciations {grin}. And there are some decent plot threads here. I just don't think they come together very well, so the definitive "vampires on television" novel has yet to be written.
The concept is a good one - a modern-day TV news reporter goes in search of an organized-crime leader in the wilds of Transylvania, and runs into something much worse. This is a vampire story with a twist - several, in fact - among them being the method of transmission, which involves unseen images on video and barely-heard whispers in the background...
The story's told from the viewpoints of several different characters, via their journals (written, typed, audio, and/or video), a nod to the epistolary nature of Dracula.
The main character, Evangeline Harker (shout-out!), is a reporter on the trail of a story. I think the author meant her to be an updated version of Mina from Dracula, but didn't know how to merge the loving, newly-engaged woman with the ambitious television personality, and the result was that I didn't believe she'd have gotten that job in the first place.
It's tough for me to separate my feelings about the woman who narrated that character in the audiobook and the character as written, since the annoying qualities of her voice, awkward pacing, and mispronunciations made an already not-that-likeable character even less likeable. But if I ignore the whole question of whether I cared what happened to her or not, the core of the story is pretty good: dark mysterious power from the Transylvanian heights finds its way directly to the heart of the high-tech databases of a top-ranked television show, with the threat that its influence may be spread nationwide - and, soon, worldwide - via a single carefully-crafted TV segment. The growing realization among the reporter's co-workers that something's terribly wrong - especially after the reporter herself reappears after a long disappearance, under circumstances that are very disturbing indeed - is quite suspenseful, and for a while there near the end I thought it was leading to a truly dramatic climax. But it didn't keep its momentum, as far as I was concerned; meandered when it should have leaped, brought in new characters when there were already plenty on scene, and never quite hit that *moment*. The whole sub-thread about the power of death - the "vampirism" seemed to center on mass deaths throughout human history - was interesting, but, again, didn't seem to be woven into the rest of the story, just dragged out when needed. Lots of plotholes, IMO. [There was also a truly ridiculous scene fairly early on, in which the heroine makes her escape from the creepy - and not-sexy-at-all - Bad Guy; the method chosen was just bizarre and more embarrassing than distasteful. Maybe the author's private fantasies were sneaking in a bit? This was echoed in the conclusion and, frankly, it left me entirely cold.]
Again, the book may be more enjoyable than the audiobook, since one could skim through the more ridiculous bits and there wouldn't be any awkward mispronunciations {grin}. And there are some decent plot threads here. I just don't think they come together very well, so the definitive "vampires on television" novel has yet to be written.
Journal Entry 5 by 
GoryDetails
at LFL - Broad St. #20 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Sunday, February 21, 2021
GoryDetails at LFL - Broad St. #20 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA on Sunday, February 21, 2021
Released 3 yrs ago (2/21/2021 UTC) at LFL - Broad St. #20 in Nashua, New Hampshire USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Guidelines for safely visiting and stocking Little Free Libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the LFL site here.I left this book in the Little Free Library outside the United Way office; hope someone enjoys it!
[See other recent releases in NH here.]
*** Released for the 2021 Great Backyard Bird Count challenge (see www.birdcount.org to join the count), for the Penguin logo on the spine. ***
*** Released for the 2021 Heads Shoulders Knees Toes challenge, for the embedded "fang" in the title. ***
*** Released for the 2021 Keep Them Moving challenge. ***
