Frank Schildiner is one of several New Pulp authors who have worked with a variety of characters. I have reviewed some of his past works (a new Thunder Jim Wade novella) and his several short stories in Tales of the Shadowmen, most dealing with Jean Kariven (an archaeologist who has gotten involved with an intergalactic war between two races).
For Black Coat Press he has done two novels using Gouroull, an evil version of Frankenstein’s monster. Napolean’s Vampire Hunters is his third, and works with a new set of characters: the vampires created by Paul Feval.
Paul Feval may be best known for creating the crime novel series dealing with the Black Coats, most of which are available from Black Coat Press and which others have made use of in new stories. Maybe lesser known are his trio of novels dealing with vampires, which are also available from Black Coat Press. Written before Dracula, they were probably written in response to a play by Dumas also written in response to Polidori‘s The Vampyre.
Thankfully we get a great introduction by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Brian Stableford that gives us a good background on Feval’s vampires and the current political setting for the novel, which is a kind-of prequel to Feval’s The Vampire Countess, and makes use of its hero, Jean-Pierre Severin, who is assisted by exorcist Franz von Karnstein, who has his own connection to vampires (I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out where Karnstein is from).
Set in 1804 on the eve of Napoleon Bonaparte being “crowned” Emperor (instead of First Counsel), this is not a straightforward horror story, or a simple story of vampire hunters off killing vampires. There is a lot of political intrigue as well.
Severin is the head of the Paris Morgue, which is a little more important then one would think nowadays. He is an expert swordsman and respected by Napoleon. Hence why Napoleon has him look into this matter. The fact that Severin dealt with a vampire and its werewolf followers nine years prior, which helped Napoleon in his career, doesn’t hurt as well. We will learn about that matter in flashbacks throughout the novel.
While vampires and werewolves seem a bit overused of late, what with movies like the Blade and Underworld series, here things are different. We don’t get overblown action sequences, but more realistic ones with a master swordsman against somewhat different vampires and werewolves.
I enjoyed this story, and things moved along very well. Now what is important to me is that if an author uses characters created by someone else that they be true those characters (even if the original author failed to use the character to its fullest potential). Sadly, not having read Feval’s vampire works I have no way of comparing the use of Severin. So I just have to hope for the best.
I think Schildiner is working on a further vampire novel, which is understandable as he set things up at the end for further works, as The Vampire Countess is set shortly afterwards, so I would think there is room for more. So if you like different vampire works, check this one out and help make a sequel possible. And don’t overlook his Frankenstein/Gouroull novels as well.
(Full disclosure: I was provided a copy of the book by the author.)
