This book was a major disappointment. 1.5 stars rounded up. Uninteresting, antiquated fashion reports abound in this soporific, rambling book. On the one hand, I liked the little wifey-poo getting involved and having an intelligent, systematic approach to investigating the whereabouts of the vampire clans. On the other hand, the narrative jumped around so much and skipped major blocks of time, then tried to fill-in a few of the blanks in retrospect. Too much retrospect, not enough action. Why hasn’t Asher gone out and had a silver mesh vest or dickey made to protect from easy vampire access, or at least placed locks on the bracelets and necklaces to make them impossible to coerce off via vampiric mind control. With as much as they fear the night-stalkers, it would have been so simple to do – even I can and have knit silver wire into a decorative and protective collar. The title of this book was apt, really the majority of the book was spent traveling around pre-WWI Europe with vampires and falling for their insidious plots and plans. I would also like to see some objective investigation of why the vampires have to feed to the death – couldn’t they feed and scare people to catatonia, draw out the process but not kill? Or feed off of the toxic atmosphere within a violent riot or prison or desperate hospital wards? Or even be behind the rush to war in order to feed on the mass chaos and despair on the battlefield. This book took three times as long as it should have for me to finish because I simply couldn’t keep my interest in the plot. Everyone in the book kept doing stupid things, it was hard to keep track of where anyone was at any given moment, and I really started not to care. Fortunately, Don Simon was vaguely interesting in a wimpy way, Lydia in a bumbling myopic way, James not so much in a let me reminisce about all kinds of unrelated stuff kind of way. I could in reality buy Lydia’s initial insecurity about herself but by this point in her marriage, she really shouldn’t be so stupid as to put her life in danger because of her fear of being seen with glasses, especially since she does not seem to think she is a raving beauty without them. She is either extremely shallow or her eyesight cannot be as bad as painted because I have bad eyesight and I would not trade anything for the ability to see my surroundings. I have so many problems with this book and it annoyed me so much, only the prospect of already having the third book in my hands kept me reading the series. Even with some of these same issues, the next book is much simpler and better.
James Asher happens to glimpse a London vampire and a man he knows is a Hungarian spy boarding a train to Paris. Convinced that if governments start hiring vampires it would be the Worst Thing Ever (particularly in the build-up to WWI), he impulsively decides to follow them and find out what's going on. When (shockingly!) the authorities in Paris do not take his warnings about vampires seriously, he's forced to continue tracking them to Vienna and then Constantinople, teaming up on the way with the vampire's also-a-vampire wife.Meanwhile, James's wife Lydia is aware of who in Vienna is likely to team up with vampires (since she's been reading the medical journals and knows who has been doing experiments on blood and youthfulness) and follows James to warn him. She teams up with Ysidro, their former vampire ally, who also has an interest in making sure vampires and governments do not team up. However, Ysidro, being a dude from the 1600s, refuses to travel with Lydia unless she has a chaperone, and Lydia, being a modern 1908 woman, refuses to put her maid in danger by involving her in vampire politics. So Ysidro uses his vampire magic to convince a poor governess that she and he are ~immortal reincarnated eternal true loves~, sending her dreams of their centuries-spanning melodramatic adventures together (all of this is a fairly hilarious parody of vampire romances; I particularly liked Lydia pointing out that the waltz "wasn’t even invented in the sixteenth century!"). Lydia agrees to let the governess come along on the condition that Ysidro not eat any humans for as long as they're traveling together. Obviously everyone eventually meets up for Dramatic Climax Adventures.Very important information: there is actually a canon threesome! (Or, well, acknowledged attraction of a V-shaped sort. It hasn't been acted on, but there's three - soon to be four - more books in the series.) I had some problems with the ending, where James and Ysidro agree to keep important information from Lydia, but I'm willing to wait and see how that develops.
What do You think about Traveling With The Dead (1996)?
I haven't read Traveling with the Dead as many times as some of Hambly's other books, though I remember liking it a lot. I don't know if my reasons are the same now as they were then, but on this re-read--and though it's still a good book--I'd definitely say it's not one of my favorite Hambly books or my favorite of this series. Part of it is the narrative itself; sprawling (somewhat by necessity, as the book goes from London to Constantinople) and not as tight, as cohesive, as I would've liked. The section of the book in Austria feels almost like a different novel than the part in Constantinople, and I didn't feel like Hambly did herself any favors when she started telling James' side of the story non-linearly; it made it more confused and confusing than it needed to be. The other part of my dissatisfaction was definitely new. In previous readings of the story, I definitely came down firmly on Lydia's side when it came to the character of Margaret Potton. But this time around, I definitely felt a great deal more sympathy for Margaret, both in text and in the way Hambly chose to portray her, both of which colored my ability to empathize with Lydia. Though Lydia is somewhat aware of her collection of privileges, her awareness doesn't mitigate the way those privileges affect her view of Margaret or the fact that Margaret is just as helplessly ensnared in the situation as Lydia herself. Probably even more so, as Lydia is embarked on this entire journey by choice, whereas Margaret only has the illusion of choice. As the only two women who spend any amount of time together in the narrative, it bugged me that there wasn't room in the narrative for more than them to be at odds the entire time. I feel like Hambly generally does a great job with women and so it was a tough pill to swallow that Margaret was both treated and portrayed so badly throughout the narrative. One thing that I don't think I paid much attention to before and that I enjoyed a lot was the parallel stories of (view spoiler)[James and Lydia falling for their respective vampire companions, and how it did NOT affect in the least their feelings for each other. (hide spoiler)]
—Erin (PT)
This is the second book in the Asher vampire series. James and Lydia Asher are once again drawn into the dangerous world of vampires. A little bit spy novel, a little bit detective novel, I thoroughly enjoyed both the first and second books and intend to read any others. That being said, these books are very similar to her dragon stories - like in another life the lead human characters hunted dragons and in another life the lead vampire was a dragon. There are also a few contradictions and less credible moments. I did particularly like the constant conflict the human characters had concerning their own ethics, which I found very real.
—Zsor
I enjoyed this one, but not as much as I did the first one, Those Who Hunt the Night. For one, we don't get to see quite as much of Asher, and more of Lydia, his wife. She is far more concerned with how she looks at every moment than I find delightful, and her fixation on keeping Ysidro righteous is just stupid, considering how much she has weakened her only ally. Once again, though, Hambly has done a fantastic job of recreating the Victorian era, and not just in London, but in Paris and Constantinople. In that regard dear Lydia is quite a product of her age, which just convinces me that I doubt I would enjoy meeting many women from that era! Nonetheless, this is a good companion piece to the first book, and I'm happy to see there's another one out in the series. So off I go to read that one...
—S.A. Bolich
