'The Fly-By-Nights,' Brian Lumley

In a kind of literary whiplash, I went from directly from Ted Chiang's highly regarded The Lifecycle of Software Objects (both a Hugo and Nebula nominee) into Brian Lumley's latest creation. Literally, from the sublime to the ridiculous, as Lumley revisits one of his favorite topics, vampires, for a post-apocalyptic adventure tale full of manly men, shrieking women and guns that jam at inopportune moments.

Through a 40-plus year-long career, Lumley has demonstrated that he is not great literary stylist. His writing is clunky (though the exclamation! points seem to have taken a needed rest), his characters have all the dimensions of a back-of-the-issue story from Weird Tales, circa 1935 and nuance doesn't go much beyond "this guy is good, this guy is evil, deal with it."

Oh, but I eat up every one of his books, quickly turning pages to get see what happens. For all his stylistic limitations (even after all these years, Lumley still writes like the military policeman he was when he started) this man can tell a story.

Here, we follow a clan of humans who have scratched and clawed to survive in a post-nuclear wasteland. The bombs fell a century and a half before, leaving small enclaves to fight for life. And they don't just have radiation to deal with either, there are mutated creatures in the wastelands, the Fly-By-Nights, who love nothing more than to make a meal out of the unwary.

The humans security is lost when their water supply is contaminated, so they follow up on half-heard rumors and head north in hope of finding more of their kind. The story focuses on young Garth and his rival, the evil Ned (we know he's evil from the outset, as he argues with the plans of the clan's leader, Big Jon), who is a big bully. They are fighting for the hand of Layla, a coming-of-age woman who, to her good senses, wants nothing to do with Ned.

The conflict grows as they slowly journey north, but it seems to have been solved when Ned gets taken away during a Fly-By-Night attack. Oh, but it is only halfway through the book, and things rarely stay dead for long in Lumley's world.

This is a breezy, old-style narrative, where odd turns of phrase are easily ignored through the sheer weight of the narrative. Lumley has always showcased a vast imagination that enjoys following thoughts to intriguing, and sometimes rather grisly, conclusions. The Fly-By-Nights are a natural extension of the vampires from the Necroscope books, full hatred and hunger - a perfect antidote to the wimpy sparkly vampires that dominate current popular culture.