Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #250727 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Synopsis
Scott St. John, who, like his late predecessor, Harry Keough, is able to talk to the dead and travel anywhere via Moebius strip. Scott becomes a spy in the E-Branch of the British Secret Service. When a government official suffers "evagination" (in effect, he's turned inside out like a glove), Scott and crew wind up on a mission to prevent a psychically gifted race, the Shing't, from destroying the Earth. The spirit of Scott's recently deceased wife permits him to dally with an extraterrestrial beauty, Shania, as well as, however implausibly, a shaggy female wolf.

Customer Reviews

Some new material please?
I loved the Necroscope series, and the Vampire World series too. Mr Lumley created a very detailed universe in which the reader could immerse themselves. I was so very disappointed in The Touch for one reason. It's nothing new. Nothing new at all. Indeed, just swap the world `alien' for `vampire', and you have nearly an exact copy of his older works. I am writing this at four hundred pages into the book, and feel I must finish it, but each page is hard work because I feel like I've read it before! If we examine the main areas of the book: A: One man who spends over half the book trying to figure out his powers of talking to the undead and using a metaphysical continuum for transportation. B: He's driven by revenge. C: Three evil bad guys lurk in a gothic structure in the middle of nowhere doing bad things. Sound familiar? I realise it's set in the Necroscope universe, but this is an duplicate of everything Mr Lumley's done before. Such a let down...

A bit of a let down
This is the latest book released in the Necroscope series. I was surprised and excited when I first heard there was a new book out, because Brian Lumley is my favourite author and I didn't realise that he had plans to write another.

I have to confess to feeling a little disappointed. The last series - Necroscope Avengers - felt a little bit like re-reading the first series, just with a slightly less engaging plot line and minor sense of irritation at the repetative use of the same phraseology and descriptions for characters and scenarios, over and over. This book was much of the same, but just felt a lot more rushed and with a complete absence of empathy for the main fella in the story.

That's one thing Brian normally does very well; tells the story of many in-depth and personable characters, very real and engaging. The hero of this story, Scott St John, pretty much bored the pants off me.

The traditional bad guys of the Necroscope series - the Wamphyri - are not involved, and it is interesting to see Lumley explore other possibilities for his psychically endowed good guys. However, that does not rescue the book.

If I was reading this as the first example of his work, I might be enthused, but as it stands, I am not. It felt very much like I had read it all before, and bar the names, I had.

I still pour lashings of love and gibber ecstatically over the first, say, 10 books. But really, I think it's time to pack it in. I didn't hate it, but there just doesn't seem to be anywhere further for the series to go.

He's been better
I was disappointed by this book. The necroscope series has been consistently very good but this storyline seems contrived, especially the ending. If I was one of "the majority", or a wolf(!) I'd be very annoyed at my treatment in this.