Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising (Dark Shadows, 3)

Do you remember that scene in _Superman I_ where Lois Lane was about to fall to her death from a wrecked helicopter, and suddenly Christopher Reeve came running at the screen, tearing his shirt off to reveal that big red/yellow \S/ on his chest? All the boomers in the theater were instantly on their feet, tears in their eyes, yelling "GO SUPE!" while their startled kids gaped at them as though they'd gone completely out of their minds.Well, that's _Wolf Moon Rising_. If you were there to be seduced by the original _Dark Shadows_ television series - and I don't mean the painful TV & movie revival efforts - reading this book is like being mugged by angels: your mind and body end up in complete disarray but you still feel blessed.Almost everyone from the original gang still living [and a few who aren't] is here. And, in the usual Collins tradition, in lots of trouble seasoned with romance, violence, and neurosis. All of which pounces on you on page #1 and doesn't let up for the next 394. Remember how excruciatingly drawn-out some of the show sequences could be? Not so here. Pacewise _WMR_ compares favorably with the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.And guess what? After two earlier _DS_ novels in which she cracked her literary knuckles, Lara Parker hits the ground running this time as a writer with as eloquent a pen as Nelson DeMille or James Ellroy. Her characters sizzle with vitality, her scenery preempts your outside-the-book surroundings, and you find yourself joining in everything from rebuilding a Duesenberg to dodging tommy gun bullets. All of this comes together in a lush, sensuous, decadent tapestry of fantasy that leaves you thoroughly gruntled. How very annoying to find yourself on the last page!In addition to showing how well she can yarnspin, Parker clearly had fun putting this thing together. The narrative ripples with in-jokes and nostalgiquips for the _DS_ junkie to find like Easter eggs. - And the women!:Grayson Hall's Dr. Julia Hoffman was perceptive, practical, sensitive, and warm. What she wasn't was sexy. Like a bad-girl version of Cinderella's fairy godmother, Parker brings Julia back as a vampire with vamp: a flameflowing cascade of hair, glowing jeweleyes, and a take-no-prisoners gown to showcase ... well, Julia's teeth weren't the only two parts of her anatomy to grow!We know from the jacketnotes that there's going to be a Roaring 20s timetrek. Right above the text Parker gives you a wake-up kick in that direction: a period photograph of a stunningly-beautiful young woman. Then you get it: Joan ... Joan Bennett! Good lord. Most of us who watched the original series knew vaguely that she'd "been a famous movie star", but she was so ... underwhelming as the wan, matronly, passive Elizabeth Stoddard. I don't think many of us bothered to look her up in those preGoogle days. Try it now and prepare to fry your eyeballs: She and her sister Constance were full-fledged drop-dead-gorgeous sirens of the Golden Age.All of which makes you cheatread ahead to the 1920 flashback to see how Parker rejuvenates her [and her sister!]. It's deliriously hilarious. With Collinwood the glitzy setting for a Gatsbyesque orgy, David's bewildered girlfriend - Angelique's latest reincarnation - is whisked away by the Bennetts for a head-to-toe makeover. "Flapper or Gibson Girl?" they speculate mischievously, then decree the former. [While this fits the frenzy of the party and properly stupefies David, I found myself hitting an æsthetic snag here: the cool, distant, and aristocratic Angelique is much more Gibson, even though that Grecian-goddess image went out with the _Art Nouveau_ of the turn of the 1900s.]By contrast, the men in the story are just their usual petulant, grumpy, homicidal selves, spending most of their time drinking [though Barnabas and Quentin prefer slightly different cocktails]. Barnabas thoroughly alienates his latest _objet d'amour_, who attracts him because he thinks she looks exactly like Angelique whom he hates. Yes, I know: go figure. Also happens to be the same lady Quentin has his wolfy eyes on, so you know she's in for some bummer dates. What Barnabas does manage, for the first time in _Dark Shadows_ history, is to terminally piss off the ever-loving/loyal/suffering Julia. Way to go, Barney - particularly now that she looks so, um, outstanding.Considering that it's Lara P. who's telling this tale, one would think that Angelique would get center stage, and some finale fulfillment. Oddly, no. The story spends most of its sequence in a sort of identity tag-team between David's teenage girlfriend and her mother, a worn-out 60s' hippie who apparently learned her vocabulary in the Marine Corps. The "real" Angelique just drops into one or the other of them now and then to confuse the reader and jerk Barnabas' chain. [I thought that they fell back in love with each other at the end of the Gerard Stiles caper in _DS_ episode #1198, but what do I know?]I wish I could tell you that after everything that hits the fan in this book, it at least has a happy ending. Well, it doesn't. Everyone still alive is just catching a breath before the next troublemaker knocks on the Collinwood door. While watching the original show, I remember thinking that six years of actual, plus several more of wayback and paralleltime, trouble could have been averted by just putting a deadbolt on that door and leaving it locked.It's peachy that Lara Parker decided, after all this time, to fling that door wide open again and let over 40 years of accumulated Bad News shamble in and run wild in her book. I've only one request: For her next one, will she please, *please* let Angelique at last have some simple happiness: love, snuggles, and laughter [and I don't mean that famous "you're in for it now!" wickedgiggle]. The poor girl has it coming.

Wolf Moon Rising is the third book in Lara Parker's Dark Shadows trilogy (will there be a fourth?) and it does not disappoint. It is a real page turner, and you will not want to put it down.That said, the story is of three "couples." Barnabas and Antionette Harpignies, Quentin and Elizabeth Stoddard, and David and Jacqueline Harpignies; other characters appear and have equal importance, but these are the three main couples, and there are three different stories of them, all interacting with each other in this book. Barnabas reverted back to being a vampire, having not liking being back in the mortal realm, and Dr. Hoffman becomes a vampire, but now as a stunning, beautiful woman, but still rejected by Barnabas. Dr. Hoffman does show her power, and wrath in the story. Quentin, it seems, remains a brandy drinking womanizer, despite being alive for over one hundred years and never aging. For any fan who has seen the series, we remember how Quentin started out as a ghost until Barnabas travels back to 1897 and changes Quentin's destiny. In the book, Ms. Parker decides to pair Quentin with Elizabeth Collins (later Stoddard) as lovers, with Elizabeth being his great niece. Elizabeth, in her youth, was a Hollywood star, comparable to Joan Bennett, the actress who play her, and in real life, Joan Bennett was what Elizabeth is portrayed.The story begins where Barnabas finds a portrait of Quentin, painted in 1897, and decides to destroy it in a fit of jealousy, not realizing that the portrait holds Quentin's curse of being a werewolf at bay. The curse is released, and once again, Quentin becomes a werewolf, terrorizing anyone in his path on the night of a full moon. This werewolf later attacks Barnabas, and is severely wounded as a result. Barnabas relies on the blood of Antoinette, of whom he is also in love. But Anoinette is in love with Quentin, which explains the rage and the damaged portrait. The main plot of the story is finding this portrait, repairing it, and re-leashing the curse back to the portrait. Quentin also starts to age, another aspect of the portrait.Meanwhile, David, now 16, falls madly in love with Antoinette's daughter, Jacqueline, who happens to be the reincarnation of the witch Angelique, who cursed Barnabas to be a vampire, and of Miranda DuVal, who was hung as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts during the Salem Witch Trials. Jacqueline returns her love to David, and they both go off to help recover Quentin's portrait. As all this is happening, Jacqueline starts to remember her two past incarnations and discovers that she herself is a witch, gifted with powers that she later uses. The spirit of Angelique does come to taunt Jacqueline from time to time, as seen in the book, but Jacqueline wants to break free of her past lives and become her own woman.To add to the plot, a Dr. Nathaniel Blair, brother of the warlock Nicholas Blair in the TV series, visits Collinwood and offers to write a book on the Collins family, and to find their curses and help to rid them. He is also interested in vampires and wants to capture one for examination. There is a part where the author Ms. Parker has a sense of humor and mentions in the story that a TV series was created based on the Collins family. David Collins, however, does not like Dr. Blair, and for good reason. He suspects that Blair has an ulterior motive, and tries to warn the family, but they do not listen. David later turns out to be right.Dr. Blair does perform a seance with Quentin, and David and Jacqueline drive in a 1920s Bentley David found in a shed, and drive into a force taking them back to the 1920s, the Prohibition Era. Here, David meets a younger Elizabeth, Quentin, Jamison, his grandfather, and the painter of Quentin's portrait, Charles Delaware Tate. Parties are happening and the police and the Mafia come in, along with the Ku Klux Klan. Many characters from the TV series in a segment set in 1897 are included here, including the gypsy Magda. Jamison Collins (played by David Henesy in the TV series, who also played David) is now an adult and tries to stop Quentin from marrying his daughter Elizabeth, accusing him of incest, which it is. The older Jamison is also revealed to have a dark side to him.Here, Ms. Parker does her homework about Maine in the 1920s, for the Ku Klux Klan was very active in Maine during the 1920s, where they stood for the original White Anglo Saxon Protestant Settlers, and they battled against the Roman Catholics, both the Irish immigrants and the French Canadians coming down into Maine. She also mention prohibition, and the Mafia's role in it. In this book, the world in included, not just Collinwood.David learns of the curses of the Collins family, and the evils in which they participated, and become disgusted. Here, we see David growing up, and knowing that he will inherit the Collins family estate and their wealth. However, he does not want the evil and curses that come with it, and later speaks out about it. In short, David grows up.Here, I will leave the rest of the story for the reader, but a lot does happen, including some surprises, and some unpredictable events. We do find what happens to Barnabas, Julia, Antoinette, Quentin, Jacqueline, Dr. Blair, and David's coming out as an adult.I will say that there is a happy ending, but I'll let the reader see what it is. This book is interesting, never boring, a real page turner, and one will want to keep reading and not want to put it down. I read this book in four days.

Lara Parker gets back on track after the slightly disappointing "Salem Branch". The book continues the story from the previous books, with a time travel sequence back to 1929. The focus of the book shifts from vampire Barnabas Collins to 16 year old David Collins and to a lesser extent to werewolf Quentin Collins and his romance with Elizabeth Collins-Stoddart.In 1897 Quentin Collins was cursed by a gypsy and became a werewolf, a Dorian Gray-like portrait rids him of the curse but also makes him immortal. When Barnabas, in a fit of jealousy, damages the portrait, Quentin is once again subject to the curse, so David travels back in time to Collinwood in 1929 to retrieve a copy of the portrait from the artist.Here continuity begins to deviate from the events in the series. Elizabeth Collins, at this point 19 years old and a movie star, is having an affair with Quentin - apparently unaware that he is her great-uncle. Her father is both a bootlegger and a member of the Ku Klux Klan and aware of the incestuous relationship. Unfortunately the author tries to be too clever by making Elizabeth's movie career the same as Joan Bennett, the actress who played her, even down to her husband shooting someone [Joan Bennett's movie career was virtually ended when her husband shot her agent in 1951]. To be honest the Elizabeth/Quentin relationship is just too weird, even for Dark Shadows.David Collins is the only character who is developed in the story. Both Barnabas and Quentin revert to the selfish characters they were when they were first introduced in the series. Elizabeth's back story is clever but just doesn't fit with the continuity of the series. I must admit though it is an enjoyable read, although if you're a Dr Julia Hoffman fan you're not going to like what happens to her.

A must for Dark Shadow fans. Lara Parker does it again with another book set in the world of Dark Shadows which she has lived. A page turner and along with The Salem Branch would make an excellent movie - Lara Parker please write more!!! Highlight of my holiday!

As described. Reasonable value for money.

Ich kann dieses Buch jedem Dark Shadows Fan nur empfehlen! Der 2012-Film ist im Gegensatz zu dies NICHTS! Das Buch fesselt einen sehr an die Handlung und lässt nicht los!Die Handlung beginnt mit den Rückblicken auf die letzten Ereignisse: Dr. Hoffman und Barnabas sind nun ein Vampir-Paar, Jacqueline (Wiedergeburt der Voodoo-Hexe Angelique) und David sind ein Paar und Antoinette mit Quentin zusammen.Barnabas wird eifersüchtig, da er ein Vampir ist und leidet, während sein Cousin Quentin alles hat: Antoinette (Barnabas' Traumfrau) und einen Schutz vor seinem Werwolffluch. Aus Wut zerreißt Barnabas Quentins Gemälde, worauf Quentin sich zu Vollmond (Wolfsmond) in einen Werwolf verwandelt und Collinsport terrorisiert wird und die Anzahl der gefressenen oder entsaugten Opfer nehmt zu.Vielleicht ist der Band nicht so toll, wie die Vorgänger Angelique's Descent und The Salem Branch, doch der Still der Autorin hat sich einfach verbessert, denn die letzten 200 Seiten ließen mich vom Lesen einfach nicht los!Wer Hexen, Werwölfe und Vampire mag, wird dieses Buch lieben! Spannend, unterhaltsam, emotional und fesselnd!Eine komplette DEUTSCHE Inhaltsangabe ist hier zu finden: [...]

Wer Dark Shadows mag ist hiermit wirklich gut bedient! Barnabas ist bei den Romanen eher der Antiheld, der Leser versteht ihn, wenn er unter seinem Dasein leiden muss. Aber auch die anderen Charaktere werden überaus gut aufgebaut und erklärt. Es fließt wie immer reichlich Blut und viele Leben werden ausgehaucht. Also alles für den Dark Shadows-Leser / die Leserin! Einziges Manko: mir erscheint das Werk reichlich in die Länge gezogen. Es hätte in weniger Seiten erzählt werden können. Daher nur 4 Sterne, was wirklich schade ist.Mit dem Film (mit Johnny Depp in der Hauptrolle) hat das Buch übrigens GAR nichts zu tun!