The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life

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From the back coverThey are cool to the touch and alluringly beautiful in their ageless youth. Their laughter seduces, their brilliance beguiles, and their fathomless eyes are the eyes which transfix...The secrets they guard are rendered in the iron doors and gothic traceries of Notre Dame. Their arts and science are the light of civilization. Their consciousness, so old, so vastly superior, stands vigil over human progress. They were the illuminati. They are the vampire.The players in this story are: Dr. John Gladstone, a fashionable London virologist on the verge of altering history; his elder daughter Ursula, enticed by the lure of immortality; his younger daughter Camille, bereft of reason, bestowed with genius; and the Lady Hespeth, whose obsession is a mask of the unimaginable.Their world as they know it will begin to dissolve in illusion and terror from the moment a young Italian falls beneath Dr. Gladstone's carriage. For Niccolo is the androgynous angel painted centuries ago in da Vinci's Madonna of the Rocks.Now he beckons. And they must follow him past the certainties of their mortal reality, through mysteries shrouded in horror, into the phantasmagoric eternity of sensuous, heady delight which is the life of the vampire.EARLY PRAISE"THE DELICATE DEPENDENCY is rich with period detail and extraordinary insight. The tension builds page by page to a stunning climax, and the sense of creeping, subterranean horror is truly awesome. I doubt that I will ever forget it."—Whitley Streiber"The past half-decade has seen a glut of vampire novels, but few as ambitious and seriously intended as this one... an impressive book, unflaggingly interesting."—Publishers WeeklyREVIEWS"... one of the most ambitious vampire tales I've ever read... a staggeringly researched historical saga as well as an unerringly learned and intelligent contemplation on the nature of vampirism, driven by unpretentious storytelling magic... the very best novel of its kind."—Fright.com"Talbot's characterizations are top-notch as conflict and ambition and love and deceit vie within human and inhuman alike... I suppose I will always want to read [the] traditional kind of vampire novel, but with The Delicate Dependency, Michael Talbot has written something much more substantial, something special, a unique and engrossing paperback original."—Too Much Horror Fiction