Amazon Category:  Horror Publisher: Kensington ISBN-10:  1575667657 Type: Fiction Pages: 304 Copyright: August 1, 2006 Second book of the five-part series about the lives of an interrelated group of vampires.

Hellnotes
Book Review: Bound In Flesh

Bound In Flesh
David Thomas Lord
Kensington Books
Trade Paperback $14.00/$20.00
Review by: Nickolas Cook

Bound In Flesh, the second installment in Lord’s epic vampire saga (reportedly a five book series), raises him to the zenith of the modern vampire fiction mountain. This may be one of the most inventive takes on the classical vampire archetype I’ve read in many years. Not since Anne Rice’s classic vampire fiction have I found myself so immersed in a fictional vampire world.

In the first novel, Bound In Blood, we met Jean-Luc Courbet (Jack to his friends and victims), a seductive predatory gay vampire living in New York City. On the international lame from his murderous mother, he played ’serial killer’ across the Big Apple, dining on the hottest of NYC gay society. As the victims piled up, the story came to an end in true tragically operatic fashion, a literally fiery denouement.

Bound In Flesh flashes forward a month, and Jack’s last victim, ex-cop Michael O’ Donald, finds that his dead lover is only the beginning of his problems, as vampire slave Claude Halloran entraps him and plans to use him to finally destroy Jack’s super powerful monster of a mom, Noel Courbet.

This tale alone would have made a decent enough story to captivate his fans, but, for Lord, that’s just the tip of the fang.

From France to New York, and then to The City of Sin, Bound In Flesh runs the gambit, from soulful introspection, as O’ Donald must come to grips with his new undead powers and limitations, to the fantastical in the shape of Purity St. Martin, The Red Witch, and Baum and White, freakishly tall albino undead twin lovers who oversee all of Jack’s legacy and estate, inhuman creatures with their agenda.

Jack and Claude form a union of sorts, and switch their old bodies for new (now Apollo and Loki) to become the toast of Las Vegas as a duo of impossible and mysterious show magicians. O’ Donald and Purity form their own union to hunt down the vampires and destroy their evil plans to perform a Black Mass to gain ultimate undead power. We have blood, lust, magic and betrayals enough to keep any Greek tragedian racing through to the last page. The end will not disappoint even the most jaded of vampire fiction fans.

With Bound In Flesh, Lord changes the pace of the story, dropping most of the ponderous sex scenes from Bound In Blood, and using more dialogue to motivate the exposition. Proving himself more than a ‘vampire writer’, or even a simple eroticist, with this newest installment, he, in fact, impresses that even the tired tropes of the weary vampire have yet to be completely sucked dry. Using a classical style- with just enough sexual edginess to titillate- he manages to break beyond the standard horror fare to create his own sub-genre of fiction, something between horror and fantasy, and undeniably his forte. His characters are flawed beings, never knowing perfection, but moving on instinct and emotion, and are more than simplistic blood-suckers looking for a fresh meal; these creatures are Machiavellian masters infused with immense mental and physical powers.

If this second novel illustrates what’s coming down the pike from this talented writer of dark semi-classical fiction, then one can only salivate for the third in the series.

Horror World
BOUND IN FLESH by David Thomas Lord
Review by Mark Justice

Don’t start at the beginning, writers are told. Start in the middle.

David Thomas Lord has taken this advice to heart.

Bound In Flesh seems to start halfway into the story as we witness ex-cop Mike O’ Donald who has become half man, half vampire by – I’m not making this up – biting off a vampire’s penis and swallowing it. He’s quickly kidnapped by another vampire, who whisks him out of the country to do battle with an ancient –

Hold on.

Trying to summarize Bound In Flesh isn’t easy. There’s a lot of story crammed into the nearly three hundred pages, and it’s not easy reading.

Multiple viewpoints within the same scene and shifts from third to first person provide a challenge to the reader. Still, if one perseveres, Bound In Flesh is a satisfying experience.

Lord writes with manic energy, sort of like Anne Rice on crack. His vampires are nasty creatures, consumed with the sucking of blood and, uh, other things. In directly contrast to much of today’s mass market horror fiction, Lord doesn’t pad out his novel to stretch the word count. In fact, a few extra chapters might have added more to the story.

Ultimately, Bound In Flesh is a gory vampire novel with a unique depiction of those ubiquitous creatures of the night. It’s well worth a couple of evenings’ time.

by Will Louis
Bound in Flesh review
By David Thomas Lord
Kensington, $14, pap.

Gay vampires continue their bloody and erotic exploits in the second novel of a series by David Thomas Lord. Bound in Flesh picks up a month after Bound in Blood left off and the story is immediately engaging, transporting the reader into the cold, cruel and bloody heart of the vampire world.
Jean-Luc (Jack) Courbet is a rapacious and beautiful gay vampire who terrorized New York gay society in Bound in Blood until he seemingly met an ugly end, after receiving a castrating bite from what was to be his last victim. The victim, ex-cop Michael O'Donald, now copes with dark repercussions to the encounter, including emerging powers and an unwanted deal with a vampire slave out to destroy his mistress, Jack's mother.
The plot is too complicated to relate here, but the characters run the gamut in their bloody quest for revenge, power and sex. It is all quite gripping. Alliances and deceptions form and hatch among a tapestry of fantastic characters, including the tall albino vampire slave twins, Baum and White, Jack's loyal servants, who combine to create one of the most unique and mysterious characters the genre has seen.
Much about Bound in Flesh is clever. Lord is a smart writer and he knows it. His characters are larger-than-life fantastical and the story is Shakespearean big, but the dark tone makes these figures terrifyingly real. These aren't your average bloodsuckers, they are rage-filled and powerful, emboldened by death and eager to build on its secrets. Lord's confident style fittingly reinforces their desire.
There is a lot going on in Bound in Flesh, but it is all worth it and it culminates in an ending that doesn't disappoint. Lord envisions five books in this series; it will be interesting to see where he goes from here.