Wanna' come back to my place? I was thinking you might pierce my heart and spill its blood in a frenzy of barbarous delight.
Father Ardelian has been summoned to a distant, secluded island to perform an exorcism. What will happen when he begins to suspect his host — the mysterious, nocturnal lord of the manor — of wanting him for another reason entirely? Will the piously celibate priest be able to resist the monster’s diabolically seductive charms?
What Manner of Man is a queer gothic romance novel about a priest and a vampire, inspired by Dracula Daily.
i don't usually publish my book reviews on tumblr, but i have a lot of big feelings about this one & you're all gonna hear about it
What Manner of Man by St John Starling
"All along I have felt that, in coming to this place, I was acting in accordance with divine plan. Perhaps I was merely mistaken as to the nature of divinity."
My heart is still so full after finishing What Manner of Man that I find it difficult to even begin to dissect my thoughts about it. Bear with me.
I believe I picked up What Manner of Man on some Stuff Your Kindle day, passingly intrigued by what outwardly appeared to be a steamy, independent, MLM vampire x priest romance. It sat on my Kobo unread for I don't know how long, until I felt the urge to read something 'light' while I'm on vacation.
This book has consumed me, and will stay with me for a very long time. What Manner of Man is one of those books that I will read over and over again, but only every so often, because it truly makes my heart ache and bleed and sing.
The author himself (@stjohnstarling) writes that What Manner of Man is inspired by Dracula Daily, and for the first third of this book, I very much interpreted it as a queer Dracula retelling. Having finished it in its entirety, however, I amend that statement: What Manner of Man is not a retelling of Dracula, but rather, a love letter to every queer Dracula reader. It takes such vital pieces of Stoker's original work - being told in letters and journal entries, summoning an innocent main character into the fold of a high-class, ancient, vampiric lord, struggling with morality, love, and desire - and creates something wholly unique out of it. You can see so intimately that Victor is not only Harker, but Mina and Lucy, too: he is not only the beguiled, unwitting savior, but the lover, the tempter, tempted, desirer, and desired all at once. What Manner of Man so intricately weaves Victor and Lord Vane's stories together, wrapped in the very spirals that consume Swallow's Rest.
As much as I do love the cover art, I think that What Manner of Man is the absolute archetype of "don't judge a book by its cover." It looks very indie, spicy, potentially kinky romance, but please believe me when I tell you that this book is one of the best-written stories I have ever read, I mean it. Starling so perfectly emulates a Stoker-esque voice for the twentieth-century time period that this story takes place in, and I am still in awe of the fact that What Manner of Man isn't traditionally published. While I am eternally grateful (and still forever stunned) by the fact that Starling has released this book in its entirety for free online for anyone to read, I would pay every single cent for it. I'm actually a bit heartbroken that there isn't a physical edition of this, because I've annotated by Kobo copy so heavily, and I would love to have a physical keepsake of this.
I keep seeing reviews of What Manner of Man that classify this is a "blasphemous/hot/spicy gay romance," but that is such a vulgar oversimplification of this story that it actually makes me a little angry. There is sex in this book, yes, but it isn't there for spectating - the way Victor recounts his encounters with Lord Vane is so spiritual, so intimate, and so loving even at its roughest, that I consider the sex in this book more in-line with poetry than prose. It isn't raw, crude, graphic, no; it portrays sex the way marble statues and Renaissance paintings portray nudity: as something to be admired for its beauty, not something to be gawked and flustered by.
And then, there is the matter of spirituality and religion that I can't even begin to reasonably unpack my own reaction to. The way Victor's experience with religion shifts over time, and his understanding of 'higher powers' by the story's end has shifted is so irrevocably altering. I suppose I take that on more heavily as someone who struggles with death and the afterlife, who is forever wondering about forces beyond our control and if our lives are really our own. I've never seen someone so perfectly articulate those fears and those wonders as Starling has in this book.
What Manner of Man is a poetic, character-driven, exceptionally well-written, engaging, heartbreaking, emotional journey that ends with such a sigh of relief that it did, in fact, bring me to tears. At its crux, at its most basic and yet most complex, What Manner of Man is the untangling of queer identity when for so long, it has been entangled in shame, in guilt, in secrecy, and in pain. Whether you identify with being queer from a religious background or not, I think every queer person can relate to some painful part of Victor's journey here.
I won't spoil the ending, of course, but What Manner of Man does not end suffocatingly. I could feel ash choking up my lungs toward the end, the possibility of tragedy making my mouth taste sour, but this book ends not with a breath of fresh air, but with a gasp of it. It feels like coming up for air after drowning, sweet and relieving and cooling. That's the only way I can describe how I feel coming out of this story.
What a privilege it is to have read this book. What a blessing it is for Starling to have written it in the first place. How lucky I am to have found it.
Wanna' come back to my place? I was thinking you might pierce my heart and spill its blood in a frenzy of barbarous delight.
Father Ardelian has been summoned to a distant, secluded island to perform an exorcism. What will happen when he begins to suspect his host — the mysterious, nocturnal lord of the manor — of wanting him for another reason entirely? Will the piously celibate priest be able to resist the monster’s diabolically seductive charms?
What Manner of Man is a queer gothic romance novel about a priest and a vampire, inspired by Dracula Daily.
Just wanted to let you know that as someone working on the field of cultural critique, What Manner Of Man is a fascinating read, and part of it is owed to the shining research and care you've put into making the setting feel authentic– but its greatness is in that it has something for all to enjoy. I showed it to a friend who doesn't know much about cultural tendencies in the late 19th / early 20th centuries and he said it felt impossible to put down!
I wonder if you've read anything by Jorge Luis Borges, I found myself making bridges to writers such as him and Oscar Wilde, beyond the lovely homage to Bram Stoker.
Leaving a recommendation for you: Vampiria by Ricardo Ibarlucía and Valeria Castello-Joubert. It collects stories of vampires and other revenants, and makes a small but interesting historic analysis!
Have a great night 💛
Thank you!!! Sorry I got this last night when I was too tired to respond. I really appreciate all of the very kind praise - though I think you’re giving me more credit than I deserve!
I love Borges. He’s one of those writers I wish I could steal everything from. I’m furiously jealous of everything he does.
I’ve never heard of Vampiria but I’m writing it down now to check out.
Wanna' come back to my place? I was thinking you might pierce my heart and spill its blood in a frenzy of barbarous delight.
Father Ardelian has been summoned to a distant, secluded island to perform an exorcism. What will happen when he begins to suspect his host — the mysterious, nocturnal lord of the manor — of wanting him for another reason entirely? Will the piously celibate priest be able to resist the monster’s diabolically seductive charms?
What Manner of Man is a queer gothic romance novel about a priest and a vampire, inspired by Dracula Daily.
reading What Manner of Man right now and this priest is so repressed I’m going insane. He doesn’t know what gay people are. He feels so much guilt about having desires and I’m so normal about it :)))
Yes I have questions, for example, what were you on when you wrote What Manner of Man, that shit gonna live in my head rent free for the rest of my life
Hello!! I had purchased What Manner Of Man last year and I just received an email from itch.io about an updated version of the book. I was wondering what the update was about, if I can ask. I am asking because I couldn't see any update info anywhere, not on itch.io nor on tumblr.
Thanks in advance and in anyway, I wish you a nice day! Btw, I love the book! I love it so much! I will get your new one once I can, I am so curious to read it!
Oh! Yes, I updated the file on itchio this morning. Just fixing some typos. I’m surprised that it automatically sends an email like that without giving me the option to provide an explanation for the update.
The more cultural power the internet wields, the more everything on it seems to feel the same. The same discussions and talking points show up on every platform, the same aesthetics (with only minor variations) permeate every corner of the web — even the weird stuff is all weird in the same way. I’m sure you know what I mean. It’s boring, it’s depressing, and it contributes to the widespread pessimism about the possibility that anything can ever change or be improved.
In the early-to-mid existence of the internet, people predicted it would lead to a splintering of culture — society dividing into many interlocking spheres with no centre. Instead, the opposite has happened. Because the internet is now experienced by the majority of people through a handful of massive platforms, we are all trapped in the same impossibly large room together at all times. Everything that gets big enough on a social media platform becomes mainstream.
I wrote about why the internet sucks now and how we can fix it.
Why I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the California condor.
The internet has removed all barriers between any given person and the formal economy, giving us the ability to enter the market without even leaving our homes. Someone who has written a novel can (theoretically) begin selling it more or less immediately. This means that there is an opportunity pressure that has never existed before. If you are giving your art away for free, you are — to a far greater extent than ever — actively choosing to not try to make money off of it. Participating in the formal economy has become, if anything, the default mindset towards making art that the internet pushes on us — the assumption that we are here to make money is built into the structure of the platforms we live within. A cursory search will reveal entire ecosystems of people discussing tricks and strategies to play off the various online systems that exist in order to make money off of any kind of art imaginable.
The California condor is the largest land bird in North America. It is also critically endangered. Through a combination of pollution (pesticides like DDT and lead poisoning,) poaching, and habitat loss, by 1982 there were only 22 condors left in the wild. The US government organized a plan to save the species, through capturing the remaining birds and breeding them in local zoos. After several years of captive breeding, the birds were able to be reintroduced to the wild, and as of the beginning of 2026, their population is back up to 607 individuals. Healthy online cultures are like the California condor in the 1980s — and they, too, need to be taken from the wild until they are strong enough to survive on their own, along with restoring their habitat.
What does it mean to restore online habitats? If the internet is polarized between extremes of public fishbowls and private walled gardens, it seems to me the path forward is to rebuild the middle. Anyone who was online in the 2000s will have some intuitive sense of what I mean by this — what I am calling “the middle internet” is occupied by finite, bounded communities. They may vary in scale, but they have defined edges in a way that social media platforms do not. This allows them to have their own unique cultures and senses of identity, as well as to have some control over who is present and what types of conduct are allowed. Although they may have varying private and public elements, they are nevertheless not completely hidden behind closed doors (as the walled garden Discord servers are.) They may have, as their public face, an associated website, publication, archive, project, etc.
Anon, you're so right. I've been meaning to get in touch with support about this for months. This blog is super fucking glitched or shadowbanned. I can't pause the queue or change how often it posts, I can only add to it. Also I can't see your full message because the inbox shows up empty. 👍
That was me! 👋 the rest of the message was basically "I noticed that I wasn't getting notifications from your reblogs, only the spike in likes on old wmom posts"
It also occurred to me now that I have post notifications on for that blog, and haven't got any of those either 🤔
