Interview With The Vampire - Anne Rice

    1976; 343 pages.  Book 1 (out of 30, or out of 13) in “The Vampire Chronicles” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Gothic Horror; Vampires.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    Suppose you have reached out to a vampire, and he’s agreed to be interviewed by you.  What kind of questions do you ask him?  Here’s some that I’d use.

 

    I’ve heard that vampires are immortal, so how old are you?  Which if the anti-vampire devices really work, and which are just urban myths?  I’m thinking of things like wooden stakes, garlic, a crucifix, etc.  Who, or what, transformed you into a vampire?  Have you turned anyone into a vampire?  Do you really bite people in the neck and drink their blood?  Do you sleep in a coffin during daylight hours?

 

    These questions all get asked, and answered, in Interview With the Vampire.  And when the vampire is several centuries old, some fascinating life stories emerge from those queries.  But perhaps the most important question looks in the other direction.

 

    What are you planning to do with the rest of your vampiric life?

 

What’s To Like...

    Interview With the Vampire, Anne Rice’s breakthrough novel, is divided into four parts, and is written, naturally, in the form of a transcription from an interview recorded on a tape cassette (well, the book was written in the mid-1970s) by an unnamed interviewer and a vampire named Louis.  The book eschews chapters and is divided into four parts.  Briefly:

 

    Part 1 is set in New Orleans and deals with Louis’s “turning” and learning to be a vampire.

    Part 2 describes a trip to eastern Europe to the “roots” of vampirism.

    Part 3 chronicles Louis’s stay in Paris where he learns to socialize with fellow vampires.

    Part 4 finishes up with Louis’s return to New Orleans and his path forward.

 

    This book was my introduction to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, and thus, I was surprised that the vampire being interviewed was not the more-famous Lestat.  But he does play a prominent part in the story, along with a couple other major characters: Claudia, Madeleine, Armand, and Santiago.  Some of these die along the way, although that’s a somewhat nebulous term with regards to immortal creatures.

 

    Although there are parts of Interview With the Vampire that involve neck-biting, bloodsucking, and other action-driven thrills, it is mainly a character-driven storyline.  Louis, Lestat, and the reader all will ask themselves: how well would I be able to deal with being able to live forever, when it's at the cost of needing a frequent supply of blood as nourishment and knowing that the world around me will change and modernize at an uncomfortable pace whether I want it to or not.

 

    I loved the “feel” of the world in the 1790s.  New Orleans for that time-period came alive for me, so did the portrayal of Transylvania and Paris in that era.  It was fun to take in a play at the Parisian "Theatre des Vampires", and the mention of penny-dreadfuls was a neat detail.

 

    The ending was good, with a nice twist at the interview’s end that I didn’t see coming.  There was a sense of “completeness” to this Louis/Lestat tale, but also an encouragement to “now on to the next episode”.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 8,036 ratings and 1,118 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.02/5 based on 584,731 ratings and 15,946 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Tignon (n.) : a piece of cloth worn as a turban headdress by Creole women in Louisiana.

 

Excerpts...

    “But he did believe in possession by the devil.”

    “That is a much more mundane idea,” said the vampire immediately.  “People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil.  I don’t know why.  No, I do indeed know why.  Evil is always possible.  And goodness is eternally difficult.”  (loc. 188)

 

    “And then strange things began to happen, for though she said little and was the chubby, round-fingered child still, I’d find her tucked in the arm of my chair reading the work of Aristotle or Boethius or a new novel just come over the Atlantic.  Or pecking out the music of Mozart we’d only heard the night before with an infallible ear and a concentration that made her ghostly as she sat there hour after hour discovering the music̶─the melody, then the bass, and finally bringing it together.  Claudia was mystery.  It was not possible to know what she knew or did not know.  And to watch her kill was chilling."  (loc. 1566)

 

Kindle Details…

    The e-book version of Interview With The Vampire goes for $8.99 right now.  Amazon and Wikipedia consider The Vampire Chronicles to be a 13-book series, with all those e-books priced in the $8.99-$11.99 range.  However, in the back of the e-book itself a 30-book series is listed in detail.

 

“She is perfect.  Mad; but for these days that is perfect.”  (loc. 4460)

    There’s not a lot to grouse about in Interview With the Vampire.  I admit that Part 1 dragged a bit for me, until I realized that it was going to be an in-depth character study and not a “Bela Lugosi” type of horror-adventure.  Happily, things events started rolling nicely in Part 2, and continued that way through the rest of the book.

 

    There is some profanity, but that was expected and I counted only 10 instances in the first 25% of the e-book.

 

    The biggest challenge was getting used to the proper, but somewhat complex, punctuation of a transcribed interview.  Almost everything was a direct quote recorded on the cassette tape (the exceptions being brief interludes detailing the actions of the interviewer), and when those were direct dialogue by Louis or some other character, both single- and double-quotation marks piled up at the start of each paragraph.  It was grammatically correct, but distracting nonetheless.

 

    Overall, I enjoyed Interview With the Vampire, which was a pleasant surprise since I tend to prefer rock-‘em-sock-‘em  thriller storylines more than character studies.  Kudos to Anne Rice for penning a book in the latter genre that kept even me interested in the struggles of Louis, Lestat, Claudia, and the other vampires to maintain their sanity and cope in a world that will now both fears and hates them.

 

    8 Stars.  A quick tip gleaned from the book, should you ever be accosted by a vampire in a dark alley late at night.  Don’t pull out your crucifix and point it at them, expecting them to vaporize.  It amuses them and makes them chuckle as they kill you.

Road Games and Other Weird Tales - Marlin Williams

    2017; 309 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Short Stories; Anthology; Horror-Thriller.  Overall Rating : 8½*/10.

    Say, does the phrase “Tales From The Crypt” ring any bells for you?  There were a couple films with that title in the 70’s; and a similarly-named TV series in the late 80’s to early 90’s.  And if you’re a member of the senior citizen crowd, you might even remember the comic-book series with that title that started it all was back in the 50’s.

    The comics are slightly before my time (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), but I do remember sometimes finding them at used-book stores and picking them up for next to nothing.

    I always enjoyed reading those comic books because, as a kid, they could scare me without giving me nightmares.  Regardless of theme or setting, each ‘tale’ had a twist to it, plus a dab of macabre humor, and that’s what kept me looking for more back issues of it.

    And if creepy tales with twists tickle your reading fancy, you might give Road Games and Other Weird Tales a try.

What’s To Like...

    Road Games and Other Weird Tales is comprised of 10 short stories that sprang from the creative brain of Marlin Williams.   The stories vary in length from 2-to-56 pages; from lighthearted to somber, and from the mundane to the paranormal.  So if you’re reading one of the stories, and it doesn’t float your boat (which will happen with almost any anthology book), there’s a good chance that the next tale will.

Table of Contents (spoiler-free)...

01)  Lickety Split – There’s more to losing weight than losing weight.

02)  Life Form – Black holes and bio-ships don't mix.

03)  Them – Aliens in a diner.

04)  The Killing Kind – I’d like my Ted Bundy with a twist, please.

05)  The Same Old Nightmare – A feeling of dread we all share.

06)  Boucherie – Vampires, werewolves, and things that go ROWR in the night.

07)  The Agency – An Oscar performance by a long-forgotten thespian.

08)  Lint – What's the word for  'fear of laundry day'?

09)  Cracked – What’s the word for ‘fear of aphorisms’?

10)  Road Games – Smokey and the Bandit meets Deliverance.  Plus bubbles.

    My favorite story was the titular Road Games.  I had a fun time wondering, along with our two protagonists, what the fiendish-but-innovative Wilkerson brothers would come up with next.  One part of it reminded me of a scene from the Will Smith movie The Wild Wild West, and that was kewl.

    My other faves were The Killing Kind, The Same Old Nighmare, Boucherie, and Lint, but honestly, all ten tales kept my interest.  Your favorites will probably be different from mine.

    You’ll meet Miss Coaly Banks in the very first story, Lickety Split, and I grew to like her.  She pops up again in the two shortest stories, so that was a treat.  She’s the only recurring character though.

    The pacing is good throughout all of the stories; there really aren’t any slow spots.  There’s a neat, short bit of prose by Marlin’s wife, Sheila, at the beginning of The Killing Kind.  And I enjoyed the nod to Fantasia in Lickety Split, and a second nod to it (specifically the ‘bubbles’ in the subpart of it, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) in Road Games.  I chuckled at the made-up word “metaphoribly” in Road Games; I will have to work it into one of my reviews somewhere down the road.

Excerpts...

    “It was a satellite, or pieces of it anyway.”

    He shook his head.  “It was a flying saucer.”

    “What makes you think that?” he asked.

    “Why else would NASA be out here after that thing came down?”

    “Because it was their satellite.”

    “The men in black were with them.”

    “FBI!”

    “They had tracking dogs,” said Mr. Robbins.  He raised his chin at Ernie, looked down at him, and doled out his next statement in disjointed words.  “Sniffing-out-little,-gray-skinned-aliens.”  He sniffed.  (pg. 89)

    “If your plan is to confront a clan of vampires, aren’t we going to need things like wooden stakes, holy water, and stuff like that?”  (…)

    “I’ve got something better.”

    “What’s that?”

    She patted her handgun.  “A silver bullet in the heart.”

    “I thought that was for werewolves.”  He chuckled at his joke and ended it with a smirk.

    “It will kill a loup-garou as well,” she replied in a matter of fact tone.

    He lost the smirk and wrinkled his brow.  “What the hell is a loup-garou?”

    “Pray you never have to find out.”  (pg. 160)

“Waitress, there’s a piece of space shuttle in my lunch.”  (pg. 88)

    The quibbles are minor and not about the storytelling or the writing.

    First, there are no page numbers, which messes up an OCD note-taker like me.  Second, although the paragraphs themselves are properly aligned to the left, they aren’t justified.  Kinda like the paragraphs in this review, but blogs can be excused from this.  Last, and least, although there’s no need for chapters in any short story, here there weren’t any breaks between one paragraph to the next when the scene shifts, and that got confusing once or twice.

    So I numbered the book pages myself, to appease my inner OCD.  And ignored the paragraph breaks and justification issues, both of which can be easily fixed in the subsequent editions.

    One last point about the stories themselves.  For me, the best thing about reading Road Games and Other Weird Tales was trying to anticipate what the twists in each story were going to be.  Marlin Williams is known for his “double twists”: just when you congratulate yourself for correctly guessing what wrinkle he has in store in a tale, he up and adds an unforeseen “twist to the twist”, which makes the stories' endings delightfully  surprising.  This “twofer” occurs in all of the tales here except the two shortest ones, and it keeps you on your toes when reading the book.

    8½ Stars.  Bottom Line: If you liked Tales From The Crypt as a kid, in any of its formats, you’re going to enjoy Road Games and Other Weird Tales.  And after you've finished, give Marlin's novel, The Attic Piranhas, a try, and keep an eye out for a pair of new full-length books he’s rumored to be writing.

This Brilliant Darkness - Red Tash

    2013; 228 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Paranormal Horror.  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

    Bloomington, Indiana is a weird place to be right now.  First of all, there’s that mysterious-acting star heading its way, and it can only be seen from in and around Bloomington itself.  Then there's the brutal and unsolved murder-mutilation of a girl in the park.

    Like everyone else, Christine Grace, a professor at the city’s university, is concerned about the killing.  But then strange things start happening in her life.  Like seeing monstrous, dark, flying creatures.  And being instantly (and roughly) transported from one side of town to the other.  With no discernible cause.  And for no apparent reason.

    Something is afoot.  Or a wing.  Or a beak. Or a claw.

What’s To Like...

    There’s a “Dramatis Personae” at the beginning of the book.  This comes in handy, since the POV switches from one character to another with each new chapter.  Sometimes it’s a third-person narrative; sometimes it’s first-person.  Sometimes the character whose POV is being told is given at the start of the chapter; sometimes not.

    The pacing is good.  You quickly figure where out this is all heading to, although just what the outcome will be is anybody’s guess.  There aren’t any appreciable plot twists, but the tension builds steadily as the Ultimate Evil (“UE”) manipulates things to set up the climactic showdown.  The book ends at a logical point, but this is not a standalone novel.  A sequel is apparently in the works, but isn’t out yet.

    I don't recall ever reading a book set in Bloomington, so I'm guessing this is Red Tash’s stomping grounds.  The “inner circle” of Christine’s university friends and colleagues are all kind of the same shade of pleasantness.  I felt like they were patterned after people the author knows.  The peripheral characters are more diverse, although a couple of them (Badger, Blake, Fengrid) get introduced and then go nowhere.  By far the most interesting character is Greachin, the UE.

    There are a bunch of religious allusions - Tibetan lamas, a monk clinging tenaciously to his vow of silence, Joseph & Mary, etc.  I feared for a while that the book was a piece of camouflaged religious proselyting (one of my pet peeves), but happily, this wasn't the case.  The language is sometimes R-rated, but felt appropriate for the genre.  Last but not least, there is a subtle flow of wit and humor throughout the book, which I especially liked.

Kewlest New Word . . .

Ruah (n.) : The vital principle or animating force in living beings.

Excerpts...

    Tom shrugged.  “You got anything stronger than this?” he asked, holding up his water.

    “Some Upland Wheat in the fridge,” Richard answered.  Don’t know if I should stand up and get it, though.

    “I’ll get it.  You want one?”

    “With a head injury?  Why not?” Richard answered.  “Not too early for you?”

    “Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere,” Tom replied.  (loc. 2201)

    “You are alien?” Greachin asked.

    “No.”  Richard was startled by the question.  He couldn’t think what to reply.  “No.  Are you?”

    Greachin stared at him, opened his beak, and hissed a putrid hormonal breath.

    “Yes, of course, you are, how silly of me,” said Richard.  (loc. 3713)

Kindle Details...

    This Brilliant Darkness sells for $0.99 at Amazon, which is a great price for a full-length novel.  Red Tash’s other novel, Troll or Derby, and 4 short stories, all go for the same price.

”When am I going to learn to stop questioning Authority and just eat the Soylent Green?”  (loc. 1349)

    Alas, although the storyline itself was good, I found the telling of it marred by some significant head-scratchers and WTF’s, and they made for a confusing read.  A couple examples (spoiler-free) :

    NASA (and therefore the US government) is aware of the approaching “only seen over Bloomington” star, yet only a single expert is sent to observe it, and he’s a geezer from across the pond.  Coincidentally, said geezer just happens to already be best e-mail buddies with Christine.

    The grisly murder understandably causes concern within Christine's collegiate circles, but no police investigation ensues.  There are multiple sightings of monstrous critters by Christine and her friends (so we can rule out personal hallucinations), yet they never think to report these to any authorities.

    How and why did Christine get zapped clear across town?  How and why did she later end up naked and unconscious in a dark alley, with no recollection of what happened?  Did the crazy monk serve any purpose at all?

    I suppose some of these might be resolved in the sequel, but none of them are addressed here.  Add to this some dreadful mangling of Quantum Physics and some hinted-at, but never realized, Time Travel, and you end up with a disjointed, incoherent tale.

   Which is too bad, because This Brilliant Darkness is a fast-moving, entertaining book, provided you can put the thinking half of your brain to sleep while reading it.

  

    5½ Stars.  Add 1½ stars if you could care less about WTF’s and head-scratchers, as long as there are blood, entrails, and psychotic things that go bump the dark.