I special ordered this book because I thought it would be really good. I read the reviews and some how got the impression that it was a sensual vampire story. It was a vampire story that dragged on a little to much. It was also vague, and not so sensual at all. I got the feeling that this story tried to capture the elegence of Dracula, but failed. I was shaken because I expected so much more.

I liked this book, but probably not quite as LeFanu intended I ought. The majority of stories are ghost tales, longer and less punchy but more engrossing than those of M.R. James, but with a very similar atmosphere. Most striking is Carmilla, an amusing Gothic story about a female vampire and her relationship with the narrator, her innocent girlfriend. Modern times have robbed the story of much of its horror, and Carmilla becomes as much an object of sympathy as a pure villain - a fact that raises new questions rather than weakening the tale. Like Gormenghast, it is easy to dismiss such writing as plain silly - much of the story IS rather daft - but the charm of the stories remains, provided that the reader enters into the spirit of the book. LeFanu's style is not great - he is rather wordy and his prose a bit "purple", but the meticulous construction of his stories makes them worth reading as exercises in plot alone. His clear love of the atmosphere he builds shows through, and it is refreshing to find a book in which the gothic is not played for laughs. Overall, this is a pleasing collection of stories with a few real highlights. Its atmosphere and style inevitably mean that it will not have much appeal to many people, but fans of the macabre and antiquated will find it a worthwhile purchase. Like Stoker's Dracula or a good Hammer film, it is highly entertaining, simultaneously chilling and slightly camp.

After reading and enjoying a number of Le Fanu's ghost stories, I discovered that he has considerable skill in handling longer narratives as well. Because of some let-down in the last two or three chapters, I give Guy Deverell three stars.

The main characters include Sir Jekyl Marlowe, a womanizing baronet; Monsieur Varbarriere/Herbert Strangways, his archenemy and ultimately his nemesis; Lady Alice Redcliffe, Sir Jekyl's mother-in-law and chief critic; Guy Strangways/Deverell, Lady Alice's grandson, the true heir to one of Sir Jekyl's country houses and the living facsimile of the Guy Deverell Sir Jekyl killed in an unfairly-fought duel many years before; Beatrix, Sir Jekyl's daughter; Lady Jane Lennox, Sir Jekyl's lover, the beautiful wife of an elderly general; house party guests, servants, lawyers, doctors, innkeepers and their lackeys...

The plot revolves around Varbarriere's efforts to work his revenge on Sir Jekyl by putting forward his nephew's claim to property rightly his, involving deeds stolen from Lady Alice's son, an older Guy Deverell, many years before, the theft occurring in "the Green Room," a chamber Sir Jekyl's father added onto the family house with secret doors and passages attached for the sake of his own amorous trysting long ago. Sir Harry's son, we learn, uses its special features in the same way his old Dad did, currently with Lady Jane Lennox.

Le Fanu sets the story in the context of an October house party, lasting for weeks, with guests coming and going and coming back, some of the guests major figures--Varbarriere and the Lennoxes--others, like Captain Drayton, the Blunket family and others added to the canvas for contrast or humor. Le Fanu has the knack of unfolding character through dialogue, and even relatively flat characters stick in a reader's mind thanks to conversations he records between them or with the majors.

I particularly appreciated the way Le Fanu deepened each of the main characters. None of them is a flat, stock-Gothic figure--Varbarriere occasionally ponders whether to renounce his revenge, Sir Jekyl gradually comes to repentance, albeit too late, for how he wronged the elder Guy Deverell and the women in his life, Lady Jane eventually 'gets religion:' not what one expects in a Victorian Gothic. Nor is Le Fanu's mildly ironic narrative voice what I had expected to find--he writes very consciously, a detached and poised practitioner of his art.

I would recommend seeking Guy Deverell out to anyone interested in reading more by the vast number of authors who were not themselves first-rate general novelists, but provided the reading public of their generation solid, dependable entertainment which still has power to amuse and divert readers in the 21st century.

The edition I own is the Dover Press reprint of the 1866 Bentley edition, ISBN 0-486-24618-3. Dover's reprint was published in paperback in 1984.

The exemplary part of this book is the reproduction of drawings, photographs and woodcuts which are fascinating and represent many genres of expression. The truly weak part of the text is the inaccurate portrayal of Aleister Crowley and his various followers. For a less distorted perspective on Mr. Crowley, his life, his theory, and his perspective, see Richard Kaczynski's "Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley." For a more detailed book on sex magick and tantra see Nikolas Shreck's "Demons of the Flesh: sex magic" that describes the philosophy and perspective of this path in depth.