| Book Review - Evolution of the Vampire |
[30th. October, 2008|03:39 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | gothic | ] |
| [ | Mood |
| |  contemplative | ] |
Evolution of the Vampire - the Australian Story by Juliet Peniston-Bird
A Book review by Margaret Copland
The story goes that when Bryce Coutney wrote his first book and gave it to an editor - she handed him back one page and said that that was the good bits, go back and work on the rest - and that today he only works with that editor.
In my opinion Juliet Peniston-Bird's book could also have used such an editior. Some of her vampire concepts are original and fresh and I was very excited about the premise of a vampire story set in Melbourne. However there are too many credibility problems, continuity errors, cliches and gratuitous religious overtones to make this story work that well for me.
The story starts out deliberately provocative when all the "Christian Vampires" get together to form their own 10 Commandments - with number 10 being Thou shalt not be Homosexual. {So far -a trilogy is planned - there only seem to be Christian Vampires} Yet none of their actions - including vanity, promiscuity, murder and suicide - seem fundamentally Christian at all.
Getting past all these issues I was very interested in her take on Vampire biology - basically "human" forms with differences in hemoglobin (hence a constant need for blood) , pigmentation (burn in sunlight) and cell regeneration (more efficient, thus longer living), plus some other mutant DNA stands etc. And I did get caught up in several elements of the story itself.
So if you are into Vampire novels you might also be interested in some of the original themes here. Hopefully however in her next book her good ideas can be somewhat better presented with the much tighter editing they need.
more information on the book which retails for $20 |
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