Hide Me among the Graves

Hide Me among the Graves

By Tim Powers
Unabridged
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“[A] fine example of the work of a much-beloved author and a spooky ride through Victorian London to boot…Powers’ work engages with something prerational that is buried deep, deep in our brains and won’t be bullied into submission by mere reason.”

Cory Doctorow, New York Times bestselling author

Winter 1862, London. Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that the girl lives—but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric ghost. But this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit covets dearly.

Polidori is also the late uncle and supernatural muse to poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen, Christina unwittingly brought Polidori's curse upon her family. But the curse bestowed unexpected blessings as well, inspiring both Christina and Gabriel's work. But when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife—turning her into a vampire—and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante agree they must destroy their monstrous uncle and break the spell, even if it means the end of their creative powers.

Determined to save their daughter, McKee and Crawford join forces with the Rossettis, and soon these wildly mismatched allies are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence goes beyond their wildest imaginings. Ultimately, each of these disparate individuals—the sensitive poet, the tortured painter, the straitlaced animal doctor, the reformed prostitute, and even their Artful Dodger–like young daughter—must choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers.

Sweeping from the mansions of London's high society to its grimy slums, the elegant salons of the West End to the pre-Roman catacombs beneath St. Paul's Cathedral, Hide Me among the Graves blends the historical and the supernatural in a dazzling, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride—a modern horror story with a Victorian twist.

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  1. Adam
    Verified listener

    A 'Quite Good Really' Story, Dragged Down by Narration

    So first off let me tell you that I am a big Tim Powers fan, and have both hard copy and (where available) audiobook of every one of his novels. So when I say that this is not one of his best stories, with too much ground already covered by the unstated-but-obvious prequel The Stress of Her Regard (which is an exceptional work), I still mean that it is great. Sure, the mostly-main-character is the son of the main character of Stress, and Powers gave way to the temptation to reprise a character that he liked much too closely: the differences between them are generally unnoticeable. And the story is quite similar as well. It is clear that Declare, Stress, and Graves at the very least are all in the same world, but Declare and Stress are very different books, whereas this one is just a little too similar to Stress. But still. It's very good, and well worth reading on its own. No, the major problem with this one can be summed up in two words: Fiona Hardingham. I have never heard a book narrated by her before, and I will try to avoid doing so again. It's not that she has a bad voice: she has a lovely voice. And it's not that she doesn't do characters, really: she doesn't, but that's hardly a deal-breaker. (Hell, I like Roger Zelazny reading his own stuff, and all his characters including the women are gravelly-voiced gruff men.) No, the problem with Ms. Hardingham's narration is her alarming tendency. To break sentences. In entirely the wrong. Place. At first I thought it was just a lack of preparation on her part, leading to her not knowing where the sentence was going until too late to give it the proper stress, and the producer being unwilling to allow enough takes for her to get it right. But after the first couple of chapters it became clear that this could be nothing other than some kind of bizarre verbal tic. She just does it so often and in such inappropriate places that there's no way to attribute it to incompetence. I don't know if it's intentional, if she thinks it sounds somehow cute, or if it's just something she picked up on her way to adulthood, but JESUS does it make listening to this book difficult. Let's just take a random sentence out of the book, originally "She still regularly wrote prose pieces, mostly religious short stories now, for The Churchman's Shilling Magazine, but she couldn't pretend that they had the spritely warmth of the work she had done before 1862." Let's see what she makes of it: "She still regularly wrote. Prose pieces. Mostly religious. Short stories now. For The Churchman's. Shilling magazine. But she couldn't pretend. That they had the spritely warmth of the work she had done before 1862." Really. She scatters full-stops like they are candy she's throwing off of a parade float. It is exquisitely painful to hear such great prose so terribly and RELENTLESSLY mangled. I will probably never listen to this again, despite my love of both Tim Powers and audiobooks. I just can't stand it.

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