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On this blog I review, discuss and analyse mostly (but not limited to) books about all things vampiric. You're very welcome to join in with your own thoughts, recommendations or suggestions. If you have a book you'd like me to review or just a question about something vampire related the ask box is there for you. Don't be shy, I don't bite... - ,,-

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The Vampire Dies In no Time reading thread!

I wanted to reread these and do a little reading thread on here for my own fun and amusement. I think I only got to volume 4 on my first read of this, but I think the manga I still ongoing so i'll just return to this thread as it continues. Not sure if I'll do one for each volume or keep them all in one thread, we'll see. It goes without saying this will contain spoilers.

Right off the bat I gotta say, what draws me into this silly content is the ridiculous character dynamic between Ronaldo the vampire hunter and Draluc the weakest vampire in existence. I mean you got "the hunter and the vampire" but also "and they were roommates" all in one package.

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Aarhus Teater's performance of Dracula in collaboration with Den Jyske Opera - Review Photographs from Aarhus Teater's instagram and website by emiliatheresephotography.

Review:

my dear dad spoiled me rotten by taking me to see the performance of Dracula at Aarhus Theatre which I have waited for since 2020, but like so many other things that year, covid put a pause on production and postponed the premiere until 2023.

Vampires as we know are hard to kill and I have no hesitations in saying it was well worth the wait to see this musical theater performance resurrected.

As the lights die down and the audience becomes silent, a thrill of anticipation for the gruesome adventure we’re all about to embark on sweeps through the dark auditorium like a haunting gush of cold wind. In walks a tall, pale, skinny man, dressed in a simple black Victorian suit. He’s got no fangs, no black and red velvet cape, but he carries himself with the aristocratic self-confidence and superiority we’ve come to recognize Dracula for. He’s shrouded in a single spotlight making him the only thing jumping out from the dark stage. Slowly he raises his hand and with a swift drop of his finger, he cues in a single haunting note. He raises the other hand to pull out another note. Slowly he conducts a haunting melody and is soon joined in by an operatic choir. The singers, dressed in old dark Victorian costumes, appear in the doorways on the balconies amongst the audience and we all realize that for the next two hours, we are entirely in the grasp of Dracula's cold dead hands. And thus the scene is set for a fantastic musical gothic theater performance.

Martin Lyngby who directed the play says that in his adaptation there is an attempt at creating room for reflection in the story. He wants to make visible perspectives that might be hidden from the characters themselves and to see them in the context of how those perspectives have changed a lot since Stoker's time. This to me is incredibly exciting since I believe this interpretation is very much aligned with my thesis on Dracula. Dracula himself in this play is a villain as we know him. He’s not a hideous monster but he is selfish, fiendish, something old that modern society has long outgrown. He’s the fear of the foreign, of infection and degeneration. Like the book, he isn’t present in the story all that much but the play perfectly articulates how his presence looms around the characters at all times even if he is not physically there. The conductor metaphor from the opening scene is played throughout the whole play and in certain scenes, Dracula is present on the stage as an observer or to simply visualize how he is always present in the minds of the people he infects. The adaptation also really capitalizes on the sensual and sexual of the vampiric both in the blood transfusions but also in the blood-sucking and how the blood is the life. What stood out to me most about this illumination of perspectives is how it is made explicit how ignorant the heroes are to their own sexualization of Lucy but also the harm they do to Mina in their patriarchal foolishness. Or rather how that perspective of theirs actually stands in the way of what they’re trying to achieve.

This was neither an opera nor a musical. The creators themselves describe it as musical theater. The composer Marcus Aurelius Hjelmborg created a captivating soundtrack by remixing old historic pieces, especially requiem hymns, and songs about death and blood. He uses the well-known “Dies Irae” as a theme throughout like a red thread. He’s got Mozart's “Requiem” but also something as old as Hildegard Von Bingen’s “O Rubor sanguinis” from 1130. The earliest piece is from 1890 and it adds an extra texture not just to the fact that Dracula as a story is over 100 years old but also to the oldness of vampires. The music is continuously used to create texture throughout the whole play. It is used to ornament the atmosphere, it creates the gothic where the scenography remains simple and clean. The music is what decorates so to speak. I did find the scenography genius in its simplicity however. Backdrops with lighted edges were used to force perspective and make the characters seem trapped or shrink. Lightboxes lowered down from the ceiling were used to symbolize Dracula's 50 boxes of dirt. A large set of stairs with a grand piano on top was often used to envision landscape or Dracula’s castle. The only real scenography the actors had to interact with was an office that could be raised from the floor and a bed.

One of the coolest and most terrifying scenes in the play was Lucy’s death. Obviously, that part of the book is special to me because I’ve spent so much time analyzing it. I was really curious to see how it had been interpreted onto the stage. Here Lyngby’s modern context comes to play again as it illustrates how our heroes in their patriarchal ignorance are quite terrifying. Lucy is held down by the three men on an illuminating box. Van Helsing narrates the events that take place while she struggles and screams in their hold. Blood starts spilling from the ceiling landing right on Lucy’s chest and as she lies there fighting for her life her white dress gets more and more soaked in blood. In my opinion, this scene perfectly captured the underlying implications of rape and general invasiveness of the female body there is in the Dracula text.

The story was constructed in an interesting way where instead of going in chronological order like in the book it was split up going back and forth in the timeline to piece together the story sort of like a mystery. I think this was done to make it more interesting to follow and to hone in on Mina’s role as the one who orchestrates the coherency of the story. However, I believe this didn’t always serve the best purpose for the story. I think people who haven’t read the book jumping around in time might make it harder for some to follow the narrative.

In an attempt to pay homage to the source material and adhere to the diary format of the book the whole play was sort of narrated by the characters reading the various diary entries. They would speak out the diary entries written in past tense and then act it out as they were speaking. An example of this would be the three proposals. Lucy tells Mina what happened but as she narrates, the three proposals happen in real-time on stage. The narration would be shared between actors, so whenever one of the suitors in Lucy’s narration would say something they would take over the narration for her but not just to speak out dialogue, they would continue her narration, speaking their dialogue in paraphrase like: “he got down on one knee and told me that he really cared for me”. I thought this was a very cool and fun way to play with the original material. Whenever Dr. Seward would speak his phonograph entries; they had a voice-altering effect that made it sound phonographic, which was another nice way of performing the diary entry elements. However sometimes, especially in some of the action sequences, this technique didn’t work for me at all. The whole last fight of the story was also narrated this way by different actors speaking what they were doing but without actually doing it. It happened in an imaginative plane where the actors did symbolic gestures to emphasize what was happening. The final fight with Dracula was essentially just him walking down the large stairs up the stage to the front and then when he “turns to dust” in the narrated speech from Van Helsing, Dracula just steps aside to the left of the stage. This made sections that were mostly performed in this manner a little boring and anti-climatic for me.

The ending still captivated me though (spoiler alert!). Dracula has been told and retold almost to pieces at this point so Lyngby cleverly decided to give it a new ending which again fits into how he really centered the story around Mina and her agency. Rather than the original ending where Mina is saved and Dracula’s curse on her is lifted, she takes over the conducting when Dracula dies as if the torch has been passed on to her. She enters the castle and she feels at home, feels she belongs. This ending could be interpreted in a number of ways but I choose to see it as an act of liberation where Mina has gained total freedom. I could probably write several more pages on why I think that is but my review is already too long so I’ll leave it at that.

Final thoughts:

In conclusion, I thought this was magnificent and captivating. I feel lucky to have experienced one of my favorite books put to life on stage like this. The criticism I have comes purely from the fact that I have such a deep passion for the source material and really in the grand total of things the parts I disliked are rather minor.

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The Fire Within My Heart (Scarlet Cherie: Vampire Series #1) Review

Ayshen Irfan @thevampireaesthetic kindly sent me a copy of this book to review. I will start by saying I have immense respect for them as a self-published author. I think that’s frankly kick ass and incredibly inspiring. The last couple of chapters especially gripped me and I have a lot of thoughts I wish to convey. I’ll try to keep the first part spoiler free and then add some thoughts after going more in-depth. Disclaimer: These are just my personal thoughts, not aimed to hurt or offend anybody. If you disagree or have a different opinion that is just as valid. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. I strongly encourage anyone to form their own opinions by reading this book regardless of what I have to say about it.

Review:

The Fire Within My Heart follows Scarlet as she is catapulted into the world of the supernatural after being horrifically murdered by a serial killer and next granted immortality when the vampire Nikolaus finds her before she can take her last breath. Throughout the book, we follow her navigating seeking justice for her murderer, her new supernatural existence, and her complicated romantic relationship with her vampire master.

The story unfolds in a rich universe mixing your classic vampires with high fantasy and the arcane. I’d say that for the most part, the lore of the world and the supernatural powers are explained and described in a way that makes it easy to follow and doesn’t feel too heavy.

It has a great cast of characters. I think it’s very apparent in the text that the author has a great affection for their characters and there are some great character dynamics. I especially loved the ragtag family dynamic that develops amongst the most unlikely of supernatural creatures. The strength of the story in my opinion is really the characters and their strong and yet at times troubled ties to each other.

There are undoubtedly some heavy themes in here of death and violence and very questionable morals at best but the book manages to balance it with humor. There are tropes in here that I loved as well. The main character and her vampire master share a special bond almost like a contracted demon in which they can feel each other's pain and emotion. I thought it an interesting layer to their dynamic and I’m curious to see how it will develop. That said, the romance here is not a slow burner and the attraction between the two is apparent instantly. Some people might enjoy that, although for me personally, it felt a little rushed and I didn’t quite buy into the justification that the vassal/master relationship justified the instant attraction.

Ayshen's iteration of vampires takes the symbolism of vampires and makes it very literal. The sensual and tempting are explicit. It’s described in various places how vampirism in this book is quite literally sex, orgasmic, all the guilty pleasures you know you shouldn’t enjoy but do. An iteration I’m inclined to think writes itself into a wave of continued contemporary vampire fiction. It’s an evolution in vampire fiction that I’m interested in but haven’t read enough contemporary works of this sort to form a conclusive theory on.

The language in the book I feel can best be described as purple although I know this tends to have a pejorative meaning and that’s not my intention. It’s very rich with descriptions. Illustrious with poetic and ornate metaphors and imagery. I find that it’s very much a matter of taste whether this style is something that engages you or not. Personally, there were some parts I loved and found beautifully phrased and cleverly constructed. In some scenes, I appreciated how detailed a picture I was painted to imagine. Without any spoilers, I can’t come up with examples but in general, everything has a very gothic and decadent vibe. Other times I found it a bit redundant. I didn’t always care to get a detailed description of every character's outfit and sometimes I felt like the description of rooms or feelings stunted the pace of the narrative. I’d forget where a conversation was going or had to be reminded what the characters were doing amongst all the beautifully described scenery. Towards the end, I felt it may have added unintentional suspended tension waiting for the plot to move on or for someone to reply.

I’m still not sure what to make of Scarlet, the main girl of the book. She seems like she has the potential to be a great strong female character. First-person narratives are hard because the narrating character is under the constant scrutiny of the reader. I loved when she’d put Nikolaus in his place and insist on her independence. That to me was the real meat of the story. At other times I couldn’t sympathize with her in scenes where I’m pretty certain I was supposed to. She seemed very self-aware almost as if the narrator anticipated the reader's judgment. In general, I think I would have liked Scarlet better if she wasn’t so carefully written to be sympathetic and likable, I found myself almost rooting for someone to corrupt her a little to make her more interesting emotionally.

My final thoughts will contain light spoilers, you have been warned.

This mix of vampires and high fantasy is something I’ve only encountered in Empire of the Vampire and I’d say it’s a fun subgenre of vampire fiction that can be fun to explore but It’s not a genre I normally gravitate to. I think that my experience with the book is very much affected by the fact that romance and fantasy are two genres I’m somewhat cautious with. I think people who are avid readers of these two genres are gonna love this book. For me, all the supernatural stuff about her exploring her heritage and powers just wasn’t that interesting to me and all the feeling of aura and metaphysical battles just got too aloof. I felt like some of the potential of the plot was wasted on it. I would have loved it if the serial killer wasn’t a supernatural creature for example. I would have loved it if there had been a point to his murders. I would have loved it if Scarlet’s gift for reading memories played a bigger part in finding him. I got very excited at first thinking they were gonna go around and revive the undead to read their memories and piece together a puzzle to catch the killer, like the vampire version of Pushing Daisies. Instead, she reads the memories of ten zombies in paraphrase just to practice and then subtracts the killer’s identity the first time she tries. Even that I thought could have led to more. Like when discussing altering a memory could prove fatal I thought “oh! She can’t just sit and watch the victim be murdered, she’s going to alter the memory!” but no. I’m left to conclude that some of these things might not get a payoff until later books perhaps and furthermore that the serial killer plot wasn’t the focal point of the story. As much as I would have liked a more intriguing mystery, the priority in the story was on Scarlet figuring out what she was, and to some people, that’s a riveting story too. Her being a nymph is almost more centralized than all the vampire stuff.

I found the most gripping part of the story to be the strange dynamic she has with Nikolaus. The climax of the book to me is the confrontation she has with him right after he kills her killer, robbing her of the justice they all worked so hard to get her. The way he reveals himself to her. Reveals that he takes pleasure in her fear, how she’s just another vulnerable woman to him who gave herself to him blinded by his beauty. The fact that he isn’t at all very different from the person who murdered her, he loves murder himself. There’s so much at stake here, one because she can’t sever her ties to him because of the master/vassal relationship, and two because not only has he revealed this but he also proved to be terribly selfish and emotionally inept in a situation where she needed his understanding and support the most. He turns out to be more harrowing in my eyes than the two-dimensional serial killer. This was a moment I felt actually had some weight to it because it was built throughout the book. Their lust at first sight, magical connection, and insecurities come to a collision. After this fight, when there wasn’t a confrontation later, no talk or apology, no consequence I was left looking at my kindle in disbelief haha. I really hope this goes somewhere in further books. There’s potential for some interesting outcomes. Either Nikolaus becomes powerful enough to control Scarlet and their love turns into hatred, or Scarlet somehow manages to become the master because her powers keep growing too, what would that do to his wounded pride and desire to own her? Maybe they do sever the connection, I can almost see a sort of Geralt and Yennifer dilemma here of not knowing if you’re in love or just under a spell. Or perhaps Nikolaus manages to admit his faults?

In conclusion: This is a typical contemporary iteration of vampires with an arcane fantasy twist. The plot is a little simple to give way to the main character's self-exploration. The mystery of the narrative is just a backdrop to project the complicated character dynamic between the two protagonists but it does hold its punch. For anyone who enjoys romance and fantasy with ornate language, this might just be your thing. I had some hesitations with the genre but ultimately still found lots of things to like about it and I’m curious to see how the story develops further.

Thank you again, very much for letting me read this. I appreciate the art you put into the world and the bravery it takes to share it. You can buy the book on amazon.

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