The story revolves around Dr John Eliot, British philanthropist and medical doctor. While working in a remote area of India, Eliot attaches himself to a military expedition headed for a place called Kalikshutra. The military is concerned with reports of Russian spies in that remote border location, but Dr Eliot is far more concerned with reports of a terrible disease there. This highly contagious sickness results in a terrible degradation of the mind and an equally horrifying compulsion to drink blood. The expedition portion of Supping With Panthers will raise the hackles of even the most hardened horror addict. As members of the expedition disappear, the jungle and mountains seem to close in around them. The characters develop wonderfully at this point -- very British, very regimental. Their overcivilized "set the natives straight" attitude contrasts well with the ancient, creeping evil surrounding them. The climax draws inescapably closer; Holland demonstrates true skill with pacing. If you're going to read this book, read it for this story within a story. Unfortunately, the Kalikshutra episode takes up only 90 pages of Supping With Panthers. The rest of the book is considerably less coherent. Eliot survives, but his experiences scar and disillusion him. He returns to his London clinic to deal with the far more mundane horrors of tending the city's poor. The familiar surroundings should ease his mind, but before he can get settled he receives a visit from the wife of a good friend. Her husband has disappeared, and she prevails on Eliot to use his noted powers of observation and deduction to investigate. Eliot detects a possible connection to the recent murder of another friend, and so he reluctantly agrees. Eliot failed to leave all the horrors behind him. Now he and those he loves find themselves the play-things of a force older than civilization. As Eliot attempts to free himself from a seductive trap, events take a heavy toll in lives and innocence. Soon all involved come to realize that death is not the worst fate that could find them. The plot nevertheless manages to be original. So given these obvious successes, what's wrong with the book? Let me put it this way: Holland mixes up Kali myths, vampires, ghouls, Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, Bram Stoker, Lord Byron (yes, the poet), and an ancient all-powerful evil. I also have a problem with Holland's use of splatter violence instead of horror. The Kalikshutra episode plays on the reader's mind, stirring individual bump-in-the-night fears. The London side of the story relies on ever-growing piles of corpses to instill fear. Holland should have stuck with his initial approach. Supping With Panthers offers some good story-telling and has moments of true subtlety and style, but I can't honestly say I enjoyed the book. So, perhaps it's not for everyone, but if you're looking for something to keep you awake at night, look no further. ( )

This book showed great promise and I was eager to read it: although Supping... started well the standard was not maintained. Consisting of a collection of letters and diaries collated by Bram Stoker, it tells the story on which he later based Dracula.

A frightening expedition into the untamed frontier region of India, a mysterious 'illness' and inexplicable events in London made for an excellent beginning.

The atmosphere was well maintained but went a bit over the top when the hero, Dr Elliott, finds himself inside a fabulous warehouse in Rotherhithe, which seems to be the central point of the evil and unnatural attacks which leave some dead, and others strangley, fatally weakened.

Shades of Jack the Ripper and one too many twists and turns left me impatient and disappointed. Not a good read for the discerning. ( )

I loved it and have got all of his Vampire books (and some others), the charactors, the scenes are fantastic and quite different from other vampire/horror books, high recommened ( )

this pourports to be a a transcription of letters and documents compiled by Bram Stoker. Readers of The Historian will know the drill.
It is in the main a beautiful recreation of a gothic victorian epistollary novel. Rather than a realistic recreation of correspondance from the period. Thus the various sources tend to lurid prose overdetailed expositions and on occasion sheer verbosity. There are a few spots where the plot athough generally both fast moving and gory becomes hard to follow Narrators deluded by vampires are not always reliable it seems. Occasionally the victorian conventions lapse. Some words are used that no repectable british publisher much prior to the 1960s wouild have used, and I am not talking about his use of jail instead of gaol. These strike a false note at first. especial when compparedwith the section that supposedly taken froma published soldiers memoirss wich very amusingly has his men using the mildest of euphemisms. Still it has a lovely period feel and is obviously well researched and packed with literary allusions.
This is above all gothic, no matter how rational its hero's strive to be it deal with the irrational. something that contrasts strongly with most recent treatments of vampires and their ilk. ( )