Hunting Memories is Barb Hendee’s second entry in her newly created Vampire Memories series. Rose de Spenser, a reclusive vampire, decides to take a giant leap of faith and sends a fateful letter to Hendee’s heroine, the golden-haired Eleisha Clevon, a two-hundred-year-old child-like vampire who lives in Portland, Oregon. The letter upon which the entire novel turns simply states, “You are not alone.” When Eleisha reads this cryptic message, she knows that not responding is not an option, even though doing so might be disastrous for her and her companions, who have diligently worked to keep themselves hidden. Eleisha has joined forces with another vampire, Philip, who unbeknown to her is the brother of her creator, Julian. Wade, a telepathic human, who has awakened Eleisha and Philip’s latent abilities, makes up the third member of this unique family. The group is driven by their desperate need for companionship and strong desire to avoid the loneliness that each has grappled with. Eleisha has convinced the other two that they should reach out to Rose, as well as other lost vampires, by creating an underground railroad, leading to the safe haven they have established in an old church in Portland. Unfortunately for them, Julian’s fear and paranoia, along with his belief that vampires should “practice the purity of isolation,” means that he feels nothing but distain for Eleisha’s plan and decides to wreck havoc by removing as many heads as possible.
Barb Hendee, co-creator of the brilliant Noble Dead series, knows her vampires and in Hunting Memories has created a complex group who are a mix of conflicting talents and debilitating character flaws, each with his own unique personality profile. No two feel or think alike; for example, when it comes to drinking blood, Philip revels in killing, Eleisha finds it regretful, Rose feels open shame, and Julian does not think about it at all. Unfortunately, until recently none of them even realized that drinking blood needed be tied to the death of a victim. None except Julian, who has spent the last two centuries destroying the Ancient Ones, thus allowing the code of laws by which all vampires should live to be forgotten. When Eleisha meets Robert Brishton, a five-hundred-year-old elder vampire, she learns the laws. Law One, never kill to feed. Two–never make more than one vampire every hundred years. Three–to make a mortal into a vampire, one needs the mortal’s permission. Four–the maker must teach its child the proper methods for survival and the laws themselves. Again we see in Hendee that desire to make the vampire a “noble” creature, one who actually respects the sanctity of human life. A theme that is consistent with Chelsea Quinn Yarboro’s Saint Germain series or, in some respects, HBO’s adaptation of Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, True Blood, which both deal with this subject in a Hendee-like way.
Hunting Memories takes place in two distinctly different periods of time. Most of the action occurs in the spring of 2008 in a world we are very familiar with, while through clever flash backs we are taken two hundred years into the past to experience both Rose and Robert’s creation. I can’t help but feel that Hendee is much more adept at writing about times gone by, or fanciful times like those in the Noble Dead series, as these seem to have a deeper resonance than did the modern period. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the contemporary part of the novel wasn’t fun, it just didn’t seem as rich in flavor or comfortable for the author. Of course, this might just be my personal bias for historical elements getting in the way, so I leave it up to you to decide. That ‘s why I recommend to readers like myself, who have read Hendee’s previous work, try not to read this one with any preconceived expectations as it is a true divergence from what we are used to from her and why it took quite a few pages for me to start to get engrossed in its charming simplicity.
On one hand, I think Barb Hendee makes a strong case for realizing that perceived weakness can actually be strengths while supposed strengths can turn out to be just the opposite, but I not sure that this is all that new of a concept. In fact, there really wasn’t that much new in the novel at all, and my one true complaint is more a problem that is generic to serial novels that are prevalent in today’s market. Novels, like this one that start with a good premise, take you to a certain point and just leave you hanging, waiting for the next installment. Too many novels today are unfortunately comparable to movie shorts, cliffhangers, like Flash Gordon was, so that you must return to the theater for the next installment. If you can write a good story, as Barb Hendee obviously can, why not tell the whole tale in one book and trust in your talent to create something new next time? This idea of the cliffhanger works better on a TV show than it does in contemporary literature. I like this novel but felt a little cheated because I expect in a book to really reach the end of the story, and truly hate to have to wait for some possible future chapter. I hope that this current trend soon becomes a thing of the past.
