Twelve

Shelve this book next to Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" books -- a Napoleonic-era military adventure story with a fantasy twist. In this case, it's the tale of a Russian squad in the middle of the Napoleonic wars, and their dealings with a band of suitably monstrous vampires. Jasper Kent's "Twelve" is a pleasant antidote to all the romantic-vampire garbage of the moment -- it's bloody, slow-moving but stately, and full of wonderfully creepy moments. The year is 1812, and Russia is facing a French invasion. So to combat the French, an officer named Dmitry Fetyukovich enlists a special group to help them -- twelve Wallachians nicknamed the Oprichniki. But one of his comrades, Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, isn't so sure that the Oprichniki are such a good thing. They're strange, savage, they leave no corpses behind, and they only venture out to kill at night. Yeah, you get one guess what they are. But after the French overrun Moscow, Aleksei sees one of the Oprichniki feasting on a French soldier -- and realizes that they are voordalaki (vampires). Aleksei manages to kill a number of them through fire and splintered wood, and ends up staying in a city of refugees and wounded, along with his prostitute mistress Domnikiia. But he soon finds that the Oprichniki were not the only vampires, and that their survivors are spreading their foul influence. Currently the vampire trend is to make them sexy, whiny and as menacing as a blob of cold oatmeal, so it's kind of refreshing that Jasper Kent stuck to the original bloodsucker mold. "Twelve" reads like a balanced mixture of "Dracula" and "War and Peace" -- a wintry, bleak story filled with battlefields, war-ravaged cities, spies and the occasional love affair. And, of course, VAMPIRES. Kent's prose is slow and stately ("They have no life and they have no love. They have hunger"), with lots of Russian history mixed into the plot. But he also knows how to inject some moments of pure horror (the houses piled full of corpses!) and splatters the book with plenty of blood, vampiric attacks and quietly ghastly moments (when a spy is killed by the Oprichniki). The only problem: the narrative gets kinda slow at times. But, his vampires are BRILLIANT. No emo prettyboys here -- these are unholy monsters with foul breath. Though Kent gives them moments of humanity, they're undeniably bad guys. And there's a cameo by a legendary bloodsucker at the beginning... nice. The characters are a little on the hit-and-miss side, though. Aleksei is a pretty contradictory character, spending many pages reflecting on loyalty and duty while cheating on his wife with a pretty prostitute -- although he improves as he realizes the evil that he's fighting against. Far more fascinating are Maks and Dmitry, whose beliefs and morals serve as the pivot for a lot of the plot. Despite some rough patches, Jasper Kent's "Twelve" is a haunting, bloodsoaked story, and a nice antidote to all the Twilighty stuff out there.

Whilst there is nothing particularly original -- and indeed much that is clichéd -- about Jasper Kent's début novel, "Twelve", it is nevertheless a veritable tour de force as far as masterful story-telling goes, providing a gripping read from start to finish. The story chronicles the fortunes and affairs (in more than one sense) of Captain Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, special operative in the Tsar's Army during Napoleon Bonaparte's bloody Russian campaign of 1812. Against the backdrop of this horrific and bloody period of Russian history -- and in particular the advance and subsequent retreat from Moscow of Napoleon's Grande Armée -- Jasper Kent weaves an even bloodier and more horrific tale, as the band of twelve mercenaries engaged by Danilov's covert unit to assist in guerilla warfare tactics are exposed as being something more than they at first appear, with a rather more sinister and far-reaching objective than ridding the Motherland of the invading French. Kent demonstrates an assured mastery of pacing; the story unfolds in a leisurely fashion -- tantalisingly so at times -- yet in a way that is never boring or unduly slow. His attention to detail -- both in the historical facts and the slow release of the central hero's back-story -- is such that the reader is constantly drawn ever deeper into the story. The author also demonstrates a deep understanding of the functioning of the hearts and minds of men; the hero's deep and oft-times tangential philosophising, self-justification and explanation provides an enjoyable and insightful additional dimension to an otherwise potentially flat horror story. And while there is horror and gore aplenty, some of it extremely graphic, the author keeps this aspect of the story reasonably restrained, preferring to concentrate more on Danilov's own personal mental and psychological battles, rather than dwell over-much on the physical combat and trials of endurance to which he is also subjected. Some may feel the story over-long at almost 500 pages, as well as overly finicky in the author's attention to detail, particularly with regard to some Russian linguistic elements; others may be disappointed at its stock adherence to model fantasy text-book depictions of the monstrous "Oprichniki" against which the hero finds himself pitted. For me, however, these aspects of Jasper Kent's writing imbue the book with a greater air of authority, which somehow makes it all so much easier to swallow, while creating a greater sense of engagement with the central protagonist, as well as his predicament and point of view. Time and again I found myself wondering what I would have done in his situation; asking myself whether I would have made the same choices or found other ones. This is rarely something I encounter in works of fiction. The writing is well-crafted throughout, with just the occasional small slip making it through the editorial process. The Kindle edition has been reasonably well prepared, including a map of R

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Mr. Kent really seems to capture the spirit of the time and place for me and turned what could have been a very pedestrian horror novel into something very enthralling. I like how he contrasted the horrors of war against the supernatural horrors of the Twelve. It was interesting to read how our war-weary protagonists, after having seen so much horror and depravity during war, were actually moved to take direct action against something that they saw as being even more profoundly appalling. Also, I really felt like Mr. Kent's characters are genuinely Russian people living in Napoleonic times, and not modern-day, Western heroes who happen to be appearing this particular setting. Anyway, it's a fine novel, where the horror is as much psychological as it is bloody.