Charlotte Norbury and her younger brother
James spend their early years in a fading country house in Yorkshire. Isolated
and soon orphaned, their close companionship lasts until James goes off to
school and Oxford. On graduating he heads to London where, through sharing
accommodation with a Christopher Paige, he begins to make his way into society.
Meanwhile Charlotte moulders in Yorkshire subsisting on her brother’s
infrequent correspondence.
Separately the reader is presented with the
notebook of Augustus Mould, running from 1868 to 1893, recording how he was
drawn into contact with, and began the study of, members of the mysterious
Aegolius Club, whose remarkable longevity is based upon a terrible secret
process – the Exchange.
The two strands of narrative come together when
Christopher’s brother (an Aegolius member) becomes concerned that the room
mates are becoming too chummy. This has dire consequence for James, as Charlotte
discovers when she decides, as James’ letters dry up, to travel to London to
visit.
It is not much of a spoiler to reveal that
the Club members are, literally, a blood-thirsty lot, against whom a small
resistance movement exists, and it is from them that Charlotte gets help in her
quest to rescue her brother from his predicament. It won’t be easy and it won’t
be pretty.
So a book that started with the genteel upbringing
of two orphans gradually escalates to a violent and gory climax studded with
death, destruction and dismemberment.
The writing is good enough to keep the
attention for much of its 500 pages; interesting characters emerge but for me fail
to fully engage; and the diluted drawn out ending is, perhaps inevitably, ante-climactic.
An interesting take on a staple of the
horror genre but for me a trifle disappointing.
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