Lilith's Dream
A Tale of the Vampire Life
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
An ancient vampire, beautiful beyond words, a vulnerable young man drawn to her by a power beyond his understanding, two desperate parents searching across the world for the son they love -- these are the riveting, unexpected elements of Whitley Strieber's extraordinary new novel.
Lilith, the ages-old mother of the dying race of vampires, has been forced to come out of her cave deep in the Egyptian desert in search of food -- human blood. But she knows nothing about the modern world. She can't drive a car, rent a room, turn on a TV. She struggles to New York, penniless, vulnerable, and starving, protected only by her beauty and her power to capture men with desire...especially certain very special men.
The instant she sees young Ian Ward, she knows that he is part vampire himself. She knows that Ian, if he ever tastes human blood, will belong to her forever. And she needs him desperately, to help her survive and live in this harsh new world of jets and credit cards and guns. She sets out on a campaign of seduction -- as sensuous as it is terrifying -- to touch human blood to Ian's lips, which will then become for him a drug a thousand times more addictive than heroin.
Ian's father, Paul Ward, part vampire turned expert and obsessive hunter of vampires, knows that if the blood transforms Ian, Paul will have to kill his own son. The titanic conflict between father and son and seductress, hunter and hunted and huntress, comes to its surprise conclusion in the secret chambers beneath the great pyramids, where the hidden truths of all human history are stored.
From its beginning in the dark back alleys of Cairo to its totally unexpected ending, Lilith's Dream draws the reader down seductive new paths of discovery, into places where no novel has ever before. With Lilith's Dream Whitley Strieber has created a vampire so original and a story so new that he has virtually invented a new genre.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Strieber's third, rambunctious novel in the vampire series he began with The Hunger in 1980 and continued in last year's Last Vampire introduces a new female bloodsucker to replace Miriam Blaylock (vanquished in The Last Vampire). She's Lilith the biblical Lilith, first wife of Adam and the mother of all vampires, or Keepers, who in turn created humanity, according to Strieber's elaborate vampire mythology. Like Miriam, Lilith is incredibly beautiful, powerful and rapacious. She lacks Miriam's modern sophistication, though, having spent many centuries buried in a cave. The novel begins as she awakens, outside Cairo, and Strieber adds a sprinkling of humor to this dark, emotionally intense series as Lilith fumbles through an array of modern technologies ranging from automobiles to bathtubs to credit cards. Returning in this novel is CIA vampire-hunter Paul Ward, who's part vamp himself and who in The Last Vampire fathered a son, Ian, (now 17) by Miriam. Also playing major roles are Paul's wife and fellow agent, Becky, and Leo Patterson, "blooded" by Miriam years ago and now a global singing star whom Ian worships. Much of the action takes place in Manhattan, where Lilith joins forces with Leo, and then kidnaps Ian, adoring him as a new, superior species, a blend of vampire and human; the novel climaxes back in Egypt, where Lilith, Leo and Ian are on the run from Paul and his cohorts. Strieber remains a superb prose stylist, with a coherent and persuasive vision of vampirism; the entire novel, though, exudes a frantic air, with emotions running at fever pitch and gobs of X-rated sex and violence; it's probably time for Strieber to search for new narrative blood.
