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In April of 1999, White Wolf kicked off the "clan novels" series, a succession of thirteen books of fiction, each devoted to one of the clans presented in Vampire: the Masquerade. The series has had its ups (Setite, Lasombra, Gangrel, Ravnos) and its downs (Toreador, Tzimisce), and Clan Novel: Giovanni, written by main V:tM developer Justin Achilli, clocks in at number ten of the thirteen. Fraught with weaknesses but containing gems of interest, it struggles to add to the series as a whole.

As with other novels in this series, my review will focus on:

tone, of general feel of the novel,
characterization,
plot and
how this novel impacts the overall meta-story of the series.

Tone

Of the four traits of any novel which I consider most important, tone is where Justin Achilli and Giovanni shine. This is not a novel about beautiful undead people, and it's not a novel about combat and tactics; this is a novel about monsters who know they are monsters and are trying very hard to distract themselves from that and, in some cases, give purpose to that so that they might overcome their monstrosity itself.

Justin Achilli has long said, from what I've read by him in electronic fora such as the vampire-l list, that he sees Vampire as a far grittier game, and far more a game about individuals who are faced with overwhelming horror at themselves and the world they live in. This is reflected in many of the game-system changes of V:tM 3rd Edition, in which high-level Disciplines often became quite stronger, and Antedeluvians' powers have disappeared altogether. The idea is that the spectrum of power should shift slightly down the Generational scale, towards the ancient, slumbering nasties with whom characters will never or almost never interact. In turn, power shifts away from the characters, and the world becomes a little darker and a little scarier.

This is something that Achilli plays well in Giovanni -- the plots being plotted and the actions carried out by and against the main characters seem esoteric and long-wrought, and the various forces which push and tug the main stars seem to mystify them as much as ourselves. At the same time, once the action starts, it tends to be fast, violent and heartlessly brutal, and this fits well with Achilli's vision of Vampire as a game of horror -- a different kind of horror than we've seen in the past, but very much horror nonetheless.

Characterization

Characterization, on the other hand, is less of a win for Achilli. Many of the characters were utterly unsympathetic, and while this fits perfectly with his vision of Kindred as monsters and not as admirable characters, it's hard to be engaged by a book when I just don't care what happens to most of the people in it. They weren't so monstrous that I wanted to see them fail, and they weren't so noble that I wanted to see them overcome the insurmountable odds. They seemed impotent, instead. I think a part of this is because it would be hard to write sympathetic characters who mesh with this novel's theme: vampires are evil monsters who would best serve the world by killing themselves, a theme explored over and over and over again as character after character pounds the message home with a 2 x 4 to the forehead of the reader. I think, though, they could have been better developed and explored in some light that would have made it possible to enjoy watching their decline.

The main character is a contested position, between Isabel and Chas, each of whom gets a great deal of screen time. I'll begin with Chas, and work from there.

Chas is, more or less, just another Giovanni thug. He's American, not Italian. He's big, beefy and not terribly intelligent. His humanity is dropping like a lead balloon and his Beast is on the rise. Given to fits of random and brutal violence, he takes out his temper on anyone and everyone, and ignores the warnings of Isabel that he needs to reign in his behavior and find some philosophy to allow him to cope. In the respect that Chas is in over his head and has no tools for coping with this circumstance, he's very pitiable. I can almost like him -- it's hardly his fault that he's a vampire. Clan Giovanni is not one to which one would say "no" when offered something. However, his increasingly schizophrenic behavior alienated me from a position in which I could have sympathized with him. He just...didn't mesh for me, somehow.

Isabel is almost the opposite, in my opinion. Isabel is very much in control of her own mind and actions, in as much as she can be given that she's within arguably the most restrictive of all the clans. She has coping tools, and she's learned to deal with her current role in life as a blood-drinking monster. There's something appealing to me about Vampire characters who pull themselves up off the emotional bottom of the barrel and work to find some way to reconcile themselves to their fates. On the other hand, she's such a flunky for the upper muckity-mucks in the clan that it's hard to feel sympathetic for her. Someone with her capabilities ought to be able to reign in people like Chas. Someone with her capabilities ought to be able to find more wiggle-room within the clan.

The other characters sort of blur together within, say, a day of reading the book. There were so many settings and characters and subplots in this novel that it's hard to keep them all separate in one's memory. I'll hit a few highlights, though.

Marcia, a Giovanni operative in America who struggles with her role as a Giovanni neonate and her loss of humanity as a vampire strikes me as a particularly sympathetic character. I would have liked to see more from her, especially since her solution, while controversial, shows a lot of strength of character in my opinion. She reaches a decision and enacts it, and that makes me like her.

Benito might as well be a non-factor in this novel. I liked seeing a supposedly powerful Kindred bewildered by his circumstances. I also liked his immediate transitions from captivity to starting to get back on his feet. His exit from the storyline, however, is something I'll cover later. Suffice to say, he might as well have been replaced with any other object for Chas and Isabel to chase -- Hitchcock's concept of the McGuffin. He was superfluous.

The final character I'll really talk about is Oliver Prudhomme, a deluded Malkavian hanging out in an abandoned school somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana. His appearance is brief, but he's one of the few characters that leaps from memory as identifiable and strongly written. I'll give Achilli credit on this one in that he perpetuates the new commitment within the producers of V:tM to portray Malkavians as pathetic and frightening in their madness, not hokey and silly. His schtick as the religion-spouting depressive schizophrenic, however, is nothing particularly new. Malkavians whose madnesses revolve around religion, and/or children, and/or murder are nothing new. Oliver is, however, at least memorable, despite his being used to pound home the overwhelming theme of the novel: vampires are evil and they all ought to die.

Overall, characterization in this novel was weak -- arguably necessarily so, but I disagree.

Plot

I really have no idea what to make of this plot. There were very interesting moments -- I really liked Benito's scene in the gas station when he was phoning the home office in Las Vegas. I really liked the scene when Chas dropped another vampire out of a high window, duct-taped to a drink machine. I really liked the scene where Isabel drew her ancestor's attention early on.

But, I didn't really like the plot of the book. It's not a believability issue -- we're trained, as Vampire players, to expect darkness and misery in the world and events in it. It's more a lack of focus: Giovanni is an interesting set of vignettes, almost, more than a coherent novel. There were too many subplots and too many shout-outs to other White Wolf book which Achilli has helmed, and this along was enough to put me off on the novel as a whole.

This is an important point for me, actually. There were nods to such other sourcebooks as Clanbook: Brujah, which is another Achilli effort (and very, very good, I might add), all of which seemed, to me, to be an effort to tie together the sourcebooks as a coherent reflection of the World of Darkness and its events as envisioned by those who created and add to it. This in itself isn't a bad idea, except that it just sort of felt....forced. I didn't need to see twice the Brujah "coming out" party held in New Orleans during the novel and also discussed in Clanbook: Brujah. It was just annoying, vaguely. Nobody can blame Justin Achilli for giving nods to his own other works (he's written Clanbook: Giovanni and Cappodocian, for 2nd Edition, as well), but that doesn't justify this book's total lack of impact on the overall storyline.

My other big complaint is the lack of focus that I mentioned above. So much of the plot seemed to be tossed in sort of at random. What on earth was Leopold doing where we saw him? Why on earth did Benito meet the end that he did? Why on earth did the main villainous force have a chat with Isabel and leave it at that? It just seemed...randomly thrown together. There was an effort to show such a wide view of the world of V:tM that I think it failed to provide us with the sort of detail which satisfied so well in Lasombra, Setite, Gangrel, Assamite or, as we'll see in another review, Tremere.

In short, this could have been better written, but it wasn't.

What Does It Mean?

Frankly, this novel doesn't have much impact on the other novels. I've yet to see anything significant in Brujah, by Gherbod Fleming, or Tremere, by Eric Griffin, which relies on Giovanni for input. This novel only tangentially -- and absurdly, at that -- touched on the overall storyline of the series. As a stand-alone novel, it might hold interest, but given the serious need for the series of novels to freakin' go somewhere with the metaplot of the Eye of Hazimel and the Sabbat invasion of the East Coast, this novel adds nothing. It could, ultimately, be deleted from the series without much being missing.

The Bottom Line

Worth reading? Yes, if you want to see an exemplary sample of the mood of the World of Darkness as its current developers want to portray it. No, if you're looking for a novel with strong characters or plot, or a novel which adds to the series. I'd recommend reading it, but then, I managed to finish Toreador, defying death and good taste to do so.

Giovanni is not the worst novel of the series -- but it ranks awfully close.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Topics	Author	Date	Latest Reply
Wait for Nosferatu (1) new	Jeff Tabrum	11-17-2000 11:31	11-17-2000 11:31 new
Minor Clarification (5) new	Justin Achilli	11-16-2000 21:33	11-21-2000 03:11 new

Clan Novel: Giovanni
Author: Justin Achilli Category: novel Company/Publisher: White Wolf Line: Vampire: the Masquerade Cost: $5.99 Page count: 267 ISBN: 1-56504-826-1 SKU: WW11109 Playtest Review by Michael G. Williams on 11/08/00. Genre tags: Modern day Horror Espionage Conspiracy Vampire Gothic Diceless	In April of 1999, White Wolf kicked off the "clan novels" series, a succession of thirteen books of fiction, each devoted to one of the clans presented in Vampire: the Masquerade. The series has had its ups (Setite, Lasombra, Gangrel, Ravnos) and its downs (Toreador, Tzimisce), and Clan Novel: Giovanni, written by main V:tM developer Justin Achilli, clocks in at number ten of the thirteen. Fraught with weaknesses but containing gems of interest, it struggles to add to the series as a whole. As with other novels in this series, my review will focus on: tone, of general feel of the novel, characterization, plot and how this novel impacts the overall meta-story of the series. Tone Of the four traits of any novel which I consider most important, tone is where Justin Achilli and Giovanni shine. This is not a novel about beautiful undead people, and it's not a novel about combat and tactics; this is a novel about monsters who know they are monsters and are trying very hard to distract themselves from that and, in some cases, give purpose to that so that they might overcome their monstrosity itself. Justin Achilli has long said, from what I've read by him in electronic fora such as the vampire-l list, that he sees Vampire as a far grittier game, and far more a game about individuals who are faced with overwhelming horror at themselves and the world they live in. This is reflected in many of the game-system changes of V:tM 3rd Edition, in which high-level Disciplines often became quite stronger, and Antedeluvians' powers have disappeared altogether. The idea is that the spectrum of power should shift slightly down the Generational scale, towards the ancient, slumbering nasties with whom characters will never or almost never interact. In turn, power shifts away from the characters, and the world becomes a little darker and a little scarier. This is something that Achilli plays well in Giovanni -- the plots being plotted and the actions carried out by and against the main characters seem esoteric and long-wrought, and the various forces which push and tug the main stars seem to mystify them as much as ourselves. At the same time, once the action starts, it tends to be fast, violent and heartlessly brutal, and this fits well with Achilli's vision of Vampire as a game of horror -- a different kind of horror than we've seen in the past, but very much horror nonetheless. Characterization Characterization, on the other hand, is less of a win for Achilli. Many of the characters were utterly unsympathetic, and while this fits perfectly with his vision of Kindred as monsters and not as admirable characters, it's hard to be engaged by a book when I just don't care what happens to most of the people in it. They weren't so monstrous that I wanted to see them fail, and they weren't so noble that I wanted to see them overcome the insurmountable odds. They seemed impotent, instead. I think a part of this is because it would be hard to write sympathetic characters who mesh with this novel's theme: vampires are evil monsters who would best serve the world by killing themselves, a theme explored over and over and over again as character after character pounds the message home with a 2 x 4 to the forehead of the reader. I think, though, they could have been better developed and explored in some light that would have made it possible to enjoy watching their decline. The main character is a contested position, between Isabel and Chas, each of whom gets a great deal of screen time. I'll begin with Chas, and work from there. Chas is, more or less, just another Giovanni thug. He's American, not Italian. He's big, beefy and not terribly intelligent. His humanity is dropping like a lead balloon and his Beast is on the rise. Given to fits of random and brutal violence, he takes out his temper on anyone and everyone, and ignores the warnings of Isabel that he needs to reign in his behavior and find some philosophy to allow him to cope. In the respect that Chas is in over his head and has no tools for coping with this circumstance, he's very pitiable. I can almost like him -- it's hardly his fault that he's a vampire. Clan Giovanni is not one to which one would say "no" when offered something. However, his increasingly schizophrenic behavior alienated me from a position in which I could have sympathized with him. He just...didn't mesh for me, somehow. Isabel is almost the opposite, in my opinion. Isabel is very much in control of her own mind and actions, in as much as she can be given that she's within arguably the most restrictive of all the clans. She has coping tools, and she's learned to deal with her current role in life as a blood-drinking monster. There's something appealing to me about Vampire characters who pull themselves up off the emotional bottom of the barrel and work to find some way to reconcile themselves to their fates. On the other hand, she's such a flunky for the upper muckity-mucks in the clan that it's hard to feel sympathetic for her. Someone with her capabilities ought to be able to reign in people like Chas. Someone with her capabilities ought to be able to find more wiggle-room within the clan. The other characters sort of blur together within, say, a day of reading the book. There were so many settings and characters and subplots in this novel that it's hard to keep them all separate in one's memory. I'll hit a few highlights, though. Marcia, a Giovanni operative in America who struggles with her role as a Giovanni neonate and her loss of humanity as a vampire strikes me as a particularly sympathetic character. I would have liked to see more from her, especially since her solution, while controversial, shows a lot of strength of character in my opinion. She reaches a decision and enacts it, and that makes me like her. Benito might as well be a non-factor in this novel. I liked seeing a supposedly powerful Kindred bewildered by his circumstances. I also liked his immediate transitions from captivity to starting to get back on his feet. His exit from the storyline, however, is something I'll cover later. Suffice to say, he might as well have been replaced with any other object for Chas and Isabel to chase -- Hitchcock's concept of the McGuffin. He was superfluous. The final character I'll really talk about is Oliver Prudhomme, a deluded Malkavian hanging out in an abandoned school somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana. His appearance is brief, but he's one of the few characters that leaps from memory as identifiable and strongly written. I'll give Achilli credit on this one in that he perpetuates the new commitment within the producers of V:tM to portray Malkavians as pathetic and frightening in their madness, not hokey and silly. His schtick as the religion-spouting depressive schizophrenic, however, is nothing particularly new. Malkavians whose madnesses revolve around religion, and/or children, and/or murder are nothing new. Oliver is, however, at least memorable, despite his being used to pound home the overwhelming theme of the novel: vampires are evil and they all ought to die. Overall, characterization in this novel was weak -- arguably necessarily so, but I disagree. Plot I really have no idea what to make of this plot. There were very interesting moments -- I really liked Benito's scene in the gas station when he was phoning the home office in Las Vegas. I really liked the scene when Chas dropped another vampire out of a high window, duct-taped to a drink machine. I really liked the scene where Isabel drew her ancestor's attention early on. But, I didn't really like the plot of the book. It's not a believability issue -- we're trained, as Vampire players, to expect darkness and misery in the world and events in it. It's more a lack of focus: Giovanni is an interesting set of vignettes, almost, more than a coherent novel. There were too many subplots and too many shout-outs to other White Wolf book which Achilli has helmed, and this along was enough to put me off on the novel as a whole. This is an important point for me, actually. There were nods to such other sourcebooks as Clanbook: Brujah, which is another Achilli effort (and very, very good, I might add), all of which seemed, to me, to be an effort to tie together the sourcebooks as a coherent reflection of the World of Darkness and its events as envisioned by those who created and add to it. This in itself isn't a bad idea, except that it just sort of felt....forced. I didn't need to see twice the Brujah "coming out" party held in New Orleans during the novel and also discussed in Clanbook: Brujah. It was just annoying, vaguely. Nobody can blame Justin Achilli for giving nods to his own other works (he's written Clanbook: Giovanni and Cappodocian, for 2nd Edition, as well), but that doesn't justify this book's total lack of impact on the overall storyline. My other big complaint is the lack of focus that I mentioned above. So much of the plot seemed to be tossed in sort of at random. What on earth was Leopold doing where we saw him? Why on earth did Benito meet the end that he did? Why on earth did the main villainous force have a chat with Isabel and leave it at that? It just seemed...randomly thrown together. There was an effort to show such a wide view of the world of V:tM that I think it failed to provide us with the sort of detail which satisfied so well in Lasombra, Setite, Gangrel, Assamite or, as we'll see in another review, Tremere. In short, this could have been better written, but it wasn't. What Does It Mean? Frankly, this novel doesn't have much impact on the other novels. I've yet to see anything significant in Brujah, by Gherbod Fleming, or Tremere, by Eric Griffin, which relies on Giovanni for input. This novel only tangentially -- and absurdly, at that -- touched on the overall storyline of the series. As a stand-alone novel, it might hold interest, but given the serious need for the series of novels to freakin' go somewhere with the metaplot of the Eye of Hazimel and the Sabbat invasion of the East Coast, this novel adds nothing. It could, ultimately, be deleted from the series without much being missing. The Bottom Line Worth reading? Yes, if you want to see an exemplary sample of the mood of the World of Darkness as its current developers want to portray it. No, if you're looking for a novel with strong characters or plot, or a novel which adds to the series. I'd recommend reading it, but then, I managed to finish Toreador, defying death and good taste to do so. Giovanni is not the worst novel of the series -- but it ranks awfully close. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 2 (Sparse)