Review by ReyvrexQuestor Reyes -- The Hand Bringer

[ReyvrexQuestor Reyes]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Hand Bringer" by Christopher J. Penington.]

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4 out of 4 stars

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Police Officer Peter Hadrian was dispatched to the scene of a crime in progress. Two officers were already down inside that two-storey home when an assailant lunged at him saying, “Here you are... the infant Hand Bringer at my fangs!” Peter fired point-blank at his attacker, then they grappled and struggled, but Peter got bitten in the neck before the suspect was finally killed. Peter killed with bare hands, the way by which he would be known to kill in fifteenth-century Romania, that even Vlad Dracula had called him the Hand Bringer. But that is going ahead of our story. Anyway, the dead suspect was a vampire, which necessitated that Peter would have to be cared for by the Apocalypse Suppression Administration (ASA), a government research facility. Through genetic manipulation, Peter became a formidable anti-vampiric weapon — just what ASA needed for a special mission to be sent back in time to medieval Romania to kill Dracula. Peter assented to be a part of the mission, provided that on their way back, the time machine would make a stopover on the place and date where and when his son and wife met a tragedy.

The Hand Bringer by Christopher J. Penington flooded me with thoughts about vampirism, mostly from books and movies. ( Make that just thoughts — not memories, mind you — I have yet to face a vampiric presence if there is such.) The author cited Bram Stoker’s Dracula as having influenced his book. However, as I recalled in tomes of vampiric lores, there were the Chinese tales about the Jiang Shi, the plethora of recent vampire-slayer movies, and the German Dracula adaptation, Nosferatu the Vampyre — this one closely resembled that of Bram Stoker’s, and in many ways, also parts of this novel, if not for the twists. That brings up the question: In The Hand Bringer, will Peter Hadrian prove to be just a stylized version of Abraham Van Helsing?

The Hand Bringer proved to be as beguiling as it was complicated, what with the past and the present being welded together to form seamless conjunction of events facilitated by modern medical technology and the mind-boggling concept of time travel. The main plot revolves around the futuristic attempt to go back into the past, to nip vampirism in the bud, so to speak, though careful not to change history. Technically speaking, however, Peter also becomes a vampire — a monarch vampire — the kind that will not bite your neck to seep your blood or burn from sunlight exposure but is of vampiric capabilities, nevertheless. Incidentally, that’s the paradox of it all, comparable to “eating your cake and having it too.” At any rate, in this novel, one could be assured of exciting action, starting from a police crime scene, progressing to a secret research facility for Sci-Fi projects, then moving on to the battlefields at a time when the Turks were rampaging over Romania, accentuated by the battle with the undead, and ultimately ending up as a fairy tale.

I liked the way Penington painstakingly tied up his narrative to historical events, and even to Biblical texts. For instance, the Muslim and Christian conflict in Dracula’s time accounted for the wars, and the spirits infesting the vampires were the same spirits as the “legion” mentioned in the New Testament when Christ made a certain exorcism. I wondered how he missed that aspect of procreation when he wrote that vampires held an orgy. I mean, could that be possible? (Legend has it that vampiric vaginas have fangs, so they have to do it orally…oh no, not oral sex, it rather means that they have to bite new victims to increase their numbers)

However, there was some redundancy I disliked, specifically, the remarks on the genitalia of Kolemis when the team embarked on the time travel machine. The information was not contributory to the succeeding parts of the story. I have thought at first that such an oversized endowment would impart some advantage to Kolemis, in particular, or for that matter to the team, in general, later on in the story.

The characters were fully developed, and the writing was very enjoyable. There were scenes of nudity and seduction, but the main character held on to his virtues — well, almost. The ending would delight most fantasy fans despite the love story, which could have potentially lasted forever, but had been reduced to be normally just extant for a lifetime. I recommend The Hand Bringer to readers of historical fiction, science fiction, and romance with dark undertones as well. A few typos and paragraphing errors had not deterred me from giving a rating of 4 out of 4 stars.

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The Hand Bringer
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