Covenant - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140168958 ISBN 13: 9780140168952

Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited

Synopsis

This is a story of a young history graduate who is abducted and imprisoned in an abandoned asylum. When she meets Rozokov - a Russian vampire, it seems to her that her nightmare will never end. Instead, she finds herself falling in love with him.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Debut fiction, vampire-style, set in and near Toronto. Graduate student Ardeth Alexander finds herself kidnapped and imprisoned with Dimitri Rosokov, a vampire who's recently awakened from a century's sleep and who is now hungry. Ardeth is his meal, periodically, while their captors film Rosokov killing prostitutes for snuff films. A bond arises between Ardeth and Dimitri, and she explains the modern world to him--he's been asleep a long time! She grows weaker but foresees that she too will be used in a snuff film and, like the dead prostitutes, be taken to the woods, have a stake driven through her heart and her head lopped off. How to survive? She asks Dimitri to do the full job on her and change her into the undead. He agrees, seemingly kills her, and when her ``dead'' body is taken to the woods, the gravedigger--at Dimitri's posthypnotic suggestion--fails to behead or stake Ardeth. She awakens underground, arises as a new being, and, as the two had planned, helps Dimitri escape. In Toronto, they separate and go underground while Ardeth learns the ropes about feeding and Dimitri accustoms himself to city life. But they're intent on vengeance against whoever hired the snuff-film team, and it turns out that that same person is still looking for them. That happens to be a wealthy woman with AIDS who needs Dimitri's blood both to live and to make millions with an AIDS cure--and even more millions by granting immortality... Enjoyable characters but narrowly focused story that doesn't advance the genre. May Baker take a bigger bite next time she feeds. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

While taking an early-morning walk through the streets of contemporary Toronto, graduate student Ardeth Alexander is abducted by two men and taken to an isolated building, where she discovers to her horror that she has been brought to supply blood to an imprisoned vampire named Dimitri Rozokov. Baker's engrossing debut alternates the present-day story with the 1898 diary of obsessed businessman Ambrose Dale, who drove Rozokov into hiding and a 100-year sleep from which he awoke only to be captured by a sadist who keeps him in line with an ultrasound machine and makes pornographic snuff films of the hapless vampire feeding on prostitutes. Learning his story, Ardeth gradually loses her horror of Rozokov and begins to see their human jailers as the real monsters. Their only hope of salvation is to trace the links to Rozokov's Victorian nemesis and discover the person behind his 20th-century captivity. Modern subjects like AIDS and incest mingle with age-old vampire lore as the narrative moves toward a gruesome climax. In prose studded with passages of dark luster, Baker offers a truly original scenario.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books Canada, Limited
• ISBN 10: 0140168958
• ISBN 13: 9780140168952
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1