So, we finish up Mick Farren's Renquist Quartet with the really silly in its premise Underland, in which not only do we get to deal with covert Government black ops involved in the paranormal, but Nazi descendants living in the Hollow Earth that fly Flying Saucers. It sounds silly as hell, but the writing makes it work.
We start with Victor being kidnapped in broad daylight by the NSA-FEMA to be taken to their underground bunkers in Virginia. After some torture, creating a new Darklost, and sort of befriending a human mercenary on the payroll, Victor gets voluntold to enter the Hollow Earth to figure out what's going on down there, since communication between the surface and the caverns is increasingly spotty, with one field team vanishing, and another evidently defecting. Requist agrees, and he and Coulson (the human mercenary), Bridewell (the female Darklost created early on), and Lupo head to Ice Station Zebra to enter the Earth. Which leads to a dark, polluted world with advanced technology and a snake cult run by 3rd or 4th generation Nazis.
Into this mix comes Julia and De Reeske (last seen at the end of Darklost with the head of her rival that also has a shard of Cthulhu in it), and a bunch of "missing link" vampires who retreated into the Earth during the last Ice Age. Which, of course, leads to chaos.
By the end, all the dangling plot lines from the last two volumes are resolved, and we're left wondering what will come next, which sadly will never be told, since Farren died.
Really fun book, despite the really absurd premise.
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