Vampires vs Werewolves vs Bookclub of One

Don’t panic! Brain death resulting in reading “Twilight” books hasn’t set in. That, I think, is one of the compensations of encroaching middle age: I have now been round the block enough times to know that the Twilight series will be cock-awful without having to read the sodding things. So what nonsense have I been reading?

“The Fallen Blade” by Jon Courtenay-Grimwood. I don’t recommend it. I really enjoyed JCG’s Ashraf Bey books (Pachazade, Effendi and Fellaheen) and I would urge both my readers to go out and buy them. Don’t part with money for Fallen Blade as it will only encourage the author to turn out more of this lazy crap – particularly upsetting since he’s capable of better. Why is this book so dire? Let’s take a look...

Firstly, it seems to be composed of a selection of rather tired memes (or “cliches” as we called them in my day): Vampires fighting werewolves and vampire assassins.  I quite like the fact that the novel is set in a sort of renaissance Venice and I quite like the way that Othello and Desdemona have been borrowed into it, but sadly I don’t like either facet enough to undo the vampire-assassins-fighting-werewolves rubbishness.

Secondly, The Fallen Blade has an amazingly rubbish heroine. Gulietta’s job, as far as I can make out is simply to be fought over by werewolves, vampires and various human political factions. JCG keeps telling us she is, “every inch a Millioni Princess” but she is just helpless flotsam washed about the place by the actions of other people. Conversely Desdaio (the Desdemona character) is described as soft and privileged, but puts her wealth and good looks to use doing whatever she thinks is right. She’s a bit of an innocent abroad (particularly in the scenes where she’s negotiating with Atilo in the belief that the worst that will result is a slap while he considers having her murdered) but ultimately a much more sympathetic character than the useless, standy-there Gulietta.

I think you can probably guess that the characters I found most interesting in this book were the ones borrowed from Shakespeare. Atilo is a Moorish pirate forced to serve Venice who has risen to become the Duke’s chief assassin. Desdaio is the wealthiest heiress in the city who, to the disgust of nearly everyone else has chosen Atilo for a husband. Already there are cracks and jealousies appearing in their relationship.  I’d have liked to have seen more of their tragedy played out – I guess that is saved for the next books (this one is, as always, the first in a trilogy) but I won’t be reading them as life’s too short!

Lesbian Vampires in Jam!

I have recently been reading "Carmilla" by J. Sherridan Le Fanu. This is the kind of book I really like because when someone asks, "What's that you're reading?" you can reply either, "Nineteenth century Gothic literature." or, "Lesbian vampires!" depending who's asking. Carmilla was an early and vampire story and one of the books which served as inspiration for
Bram Stoker's Dracula. The story is narrated by a beautiful nineteen-year-old who lives in a castle with her father and tells of how the mysterious Carmilla comes to stay with them. Carmilla doesn't get up until the afternoon, suffers from a strange illness and wants to touch the narrator inappropriately. Soon local peasant girls are found pale and dead and as the narrator begins to suffer from a bizarre langour, her father is eventually prevailed upon to call in the vampire hunter.

At the end of the novel, there are still a substantial number of loose ends: Carmilla originally arrived with her mother, who is presumably a vampire too and still on the loose. There was also an old woman in their carriage as well, so that's two of them. And what about all the peasants Carmilla drained? Are they coming back from the dead as lesbians? I am a little surprised that the narrator can see one vampire killed and assume that all is now well. If the book were more modern I would assume the extra vampires were being kept alive for the sequel, Carmilla Bites Back.

The Night Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko

In Moscow, amoungst the businessmen, prostitutes, drunks, petty criminals, organised criminals and blameless citizens living in their grey concrete appartments and cooking with Remoskas are the Others. Some of them are nice and some of them are nasty. After years spent in conflict which nearly destroyed both sides, the Others have come up with The Treaty. Light and Dark magicians have agreed to a truce where neither of them will influence normal humans. 2 forces have been set up to police it: The Night Watch observes the Dark Side while the Day Watch ensures that the Light forces live by the truce. For example, the Light has to allow vampires to eat a certain number of humans, provided they are hunted according to rules agreed by both sides. To a casual observer, there can often be precious little moral difference between the Light and the Dark.

Anton is a 30-something programmer (I like him already!) and lowly officer of the Night Watch. He is quite at home running queries on the Big Database of Magic Stuff and keeping the servers of the Light up. He's definitely not at home walking the corridors of the Metro with a clip full of silver bullets looking for a rogue vampire. Unfortunately, while the Dark is over-subscribed and probably has a waiting list to join, the Light is always short-staffed. Anton's problems don't end with the Dark; his own boss, the staggeringly Machievellian Boris Ignatievich, is quite capable of sacrificing pawns from the Light in the cause of a larger strategem against the Dark. And then there's Anton's new girlfriend who is turning out to have the makings of a top-notch sorcercess. Pretty soon, Anton will be the intellectual equivalent of tumble-drier-fluff to her and that makes it kind of hard to feel pleased for your partner. The book is essentially three stories centred on Anton in which he has to try and stay alive, not break the Treaty and avoid causing evil in increasingly difficult circumstances.

One of the things that really works for me in this book is the setting. Maybe I absorbed too much Yankee propaganda during the Cold War, but I find Russia intrinsically sinister and have no problem believing that Moscow might be full of vampires and werewolves. Maybe it's the endless snow and greyness, maybe it's the terrifying architecture (I've included a picture of one of the “Stalin Buildings”, scariest buildings in a scary, scary city), maybe it's the fact that the population appear to have recently voted to hand their country over wholesale to the KGB. When I think of Russia I think of Stalin's purges, the 3 am knock at the door from the secret police and (latterly) of a country where the politicians and the gangsters are impossible to tell apart. Think of all the “psychogeography” bollocks that has been written about London and imagine doing the same thing with a city which is equally old, but also has a rich history of seige, torture and tramps freezing to death. I visited Moscow in 1993 as part of a school history trip and rode on the Moscow Metro and as Mr Snipes says, “There are worse things out there than vampires”.

For what it's worth, here are my pretentious theories about what the deeper meaning of the book might be: It seems to me that the theme of the book is compromise and appeasement which leaves everyone tainted, but avoids open warfare. Perhaps this is meant to represent the way the USSR has been divvied up between robber baron business types the elected authorities. The difference between Light and Dark is all in their attitude to normal people. The Light is protective (communism?) while the Dark magicians seek to exploit the ordinary folk for person gain (capitalism?). Both sides are capable of murderous or duplicitous actions and are locked in stalemate. So perhaps the book is not a metaphor for modern Russia and it's really the Cold War all over again. Or maybe it's just a Russian fantasy novel...

Whatever, The Night Watch might not be literature, but it is an absolutely cracking read. I can give no higher praise for fiction than this: this book gave me nightmares. It fired up my imagination such that I spent the whole night trying to evade Dark magicians on the Moscow Metro.

I now fancy reading more sinister soviet goings on in the form of “The Master and Marguerita”. Hope it has Roger Delgado in it. He was my favourite Master.

Many thanks to L for lending me this book – sorry about the page I got marmalade on. Couldn’t put it down for breakfast!

Pulp Fiction for January

There are some who probably believe that January is the month for tackling the weighty tomes that have been sitting unread on your shelf for the past year, making you feel guilty. I could not disagree more. With the outside cold and dark and all my money spent long before payday, January already has plenty of potential for misery without making things any worse. Therefore I have indulging in a bit of pulpish genre fiction to cheer myself up.

All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses An Eye – Christopher Brookmeyer

This book is currently the top contender for “Airport Novel of the Year”, and award (bestowed in a star-studded ceremony which takes place in my imagination) which I give for the most entertainly daft paperback thriller I've read all year. Previous winners include “Good News, Bad News” by Mark Wolstonecroft and a delightfully silly book about an ex-navy seal going cave diving, so it's pretty prestigious. In real life All Fun and Games was winner of the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing – although this is no guarantee of anything; the same prize was won by DBC Pierre's “Vernon God Little” which is unspeakably depressing!

Anyway, the plot is that a top scientist goes missing from his job at a secret weapons research facility. He is being hunted by all the major arms manufacturers in order that they can either make use of his research, or ensure that it is never completed. The leader of a team of mercenaries hired by the scientist's original employer comes up with a brilliant plan: he will hire the one person who will stop at absolutely nothing to find the missing scientist... his mum! His mum is a forty something Scottish housewife who has never committed so much as parking offence. All this is about to change as wee Janet goes AWOL from her suburban life and finds the skills learned in boxercise proove very useful in the cut-throat world of international espionage.

As I race towards middle age myself, I find that I particularly like books and films which are kind to ladies of this age (Check out Kung Fu Hustle – it features a chain-smoking, plump, middle-aged lady kung fu master!). I like to think that I will still be allowed to have adventures when I'm forty. One thing I didn't like was the sex scene between Janet and the international man of mystery who has recruited her. I think this is partly just me (I prefer my sexual tension unresolved) and partly because it felt like the author was writing to a formula (e.g. hollywood blockbusters must have 3 explosions and a car chase, international spy stories need at least one sex scene) rather than allowing his characters to behave consistently. Nevertheless, I was enormously pleased when Janet left her annoying, complacent husband at the end. Bugger girl power, this book has middle-aged-woman-firing-two-9mm-barettas-at-once-power.

I Am Legend – Richard Matheson

This book is number 2 in the “SF masterworks” series. Does this mean that it is officially the 2^nd best SF ever? Don't know about that but really good for its time and well worth a read if you haven't already. In fact, go and read it right now as I'm about to give away the ending.

Robert Neville might well be the last human left alive. A mystery virus seems to have turned everyone else into vampires. By night he cowers in his fortified house and by day he repairs his defences, then seeks out and stakes as many sleeping vampires has he can find.

Eventually his house is infitrated by Ruth, part of a group of people infected with the virus, who have managed to stave off full undeadness (with magical mcguffin tablets of some kind). This allows them to retain their personalties and intelligence and now they are rebuiling society – for vampires. When members of this group finally capture Neville and sentence him to death, he realises that from their point of view he his the night salking thing of terror who comes and kills them when they are helpless in their beds. He notes with grim satisfaction that he has become a creature of legend.

My husband I both read this recently while off work with the flu and it becoes particularly resonnant if read when you've been at home all day on your own, bored, lonely and feeling like you might well be the last person alive. Much of the point of the book seems to be about the dehumanising nature of hardship. After the death of his wife and daughter Neville seems to have lost the capacity for any feeling oter than anger. His constnat conflit with the vampires has made him nable to think of them as anything other than blood-seeking animals, desite observing intelligent behaviour in some of them – he even captures some of them alive to experiment on when he is trying to investigate their condition.

Not sure if I can go & see Will Smith film as I fear some Hollywood arse-wit will have gone and stuck a happy ending on to it.