Carpathia – By Matt Forbeck

Matt Forbeck is a genius. Not in the ‘Enstein you’re so amazing’ type of way, nor even ‘Stephen, your concepts about the origin of the universe amaze and astound me type of way.

No, Matt Forbeck is the type of genius who can go along to the Kickstarter website and say ‘I want to write. I want to get paid for writing. Who’ll pay me?’ and then have loads of his fans pay him to write the sort of books they love. Amazing. Wish I’d thought of it before. Wish I had loads of fans as well.

The reason that people are so willing to splash the cash on a book that hasn’t even been written yet, is because he is a literary genius as well. He writes books that defy being placed into any one genre – or indeed anyone’s genre. He writes books that make a damn good read and which – thankfully – don’t force you to stretch your minds beyond the unbelievable.

Carpathia is the first of his titles that I have ever read, and I must say that I enjoyed it. He has written, in the words of an early 1900’s gentleman, ‘a ripping good yarn.’ Carpathia is the sort of read that can have you chuckling at one point, and then revelling in gore the next. Sometimes I even chuckled during the revelling, but that’s just me.

I’m not usually fan of disaster movies, there is neither enough gore nor chuckles. I like Gothic Horror, Vampire stories and Steampunk. Carpathia ticks all of those boxes. Obviously there aren’t any brass goggles in Carpathia, but the rest is there in spades, and you can always imagine the characters wearing goggles if you like. There’s also a love triangle and a laugh out loud section dealing with the ‘love that shall not be spoken of’, which sounds like Voldermortaphelia, but which is actually far more acceptable.

Forbeck keeps the pace of the story going, hitting peaks and troughs in the action like a trained Tour de France cyclist in the alps. Nor does he resort to gore for gore’s sake. Where a bit of blood is required he’s more than happy to spill the claret. Where he wants the reader to imagine what’s going on, he gives just enough information and then turns the lights out, quite literally in one scene. It’s rather like watching a 1950’s love film. The actors kiss passionately whilst managing to remain cooly distant, and then slip into bed and turn the light out.

For me, Carpathia is the perfect blend of action, adventure, disaster, love, gothic horror and vampires. If you can come up with a genre name for that, you’re a better man than me!

You can follow Matt Forbeck on Twitter using @mforbeck