"In shaded hollows of the realm's desperate desires/And in the pale confines of the moon's open heart/I pray in silent hands with dry tears/Upon swollen knees laid deep in regret..."
Those lines of poetry open Chapter One of The Forgotten Scribes, one of the best-written tales of love, loss, betrayal, courage--and vampires--that I have ever read. With the skill and confidence of a master story-teller, first-time author Anthony Downen pulls you into his world and shows you the human soul at its darkest and at its most noble.
Aramis Faro, captain of the Illumination, brings his ship to a new port, but on his first evening ashore Aramis's entire crew is slain, their bloodless bodies tossed overboard in the night. After a frightened Aramis takes his ship out to sea, he meets the man who killed his crew, a powerful, remorseless vampire named Eric Diallen.
Diallen attacks Aramis, and as Aramis struggles Diallen says, "That's right. Fight it. Enjoy your death. It's all you have left." But a fire aboard the ship leads to the gunpowder room and the ensuing explosion leaves Aramis half-dead, his ship destroyed and Diallen apparently blown to bits.
Without giving away too much of the story, Aramis finds that he is now a vampire, but struggles mightily against the curse that has been laid upon him. Craving blood but not wishing to take lives, Aramis determines to attack and kill only those whose crimes make them deserving of death.
Aramis "saves" the life of a young woman by turning her into a vampire and killing her attacker, and when the man's father, Darius Craven, learns that his son's murderer was Aramis Faro, Craven vows revenge on Aramis and all other vampires.
I am tempted to tell you the ending, but this epic tale contains too powerful, too strange and too downright fascinating a twist to reveal until you have read this story yourself. Suffice it to say that the author has redefined "hell."
Each chapter opens with some lines of poetry, one of the most telling of which is this: ...for now I am the lamb that has slain the Shepherd/leaving the key to my pen locked away in your sunken corpse."
This is a dark tale, but it is a brilliantly dark one, weaving in questions of religion, ethics, love, honor, good and evil, and right and wrong. It is, in short, a story of the human condition.
I know Mr. Downen,who is only in his mid-twenties, will be presenting us with other books in the saga of Aramis Faro, and I eagerly look forward to reading each of them. What we have here is a brilliant new author with a bright future ahead of him. I cannot praise The Forgotten Scribes highly enough and would gladly recommend it to anyone who likes a good vampire story. --"Good" in at least two senses of the word.
Charles Cordova
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