The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Dark Ages: Nosferatu, by Gherbod Fleming, is the first novel in a new 13-part series by White Wolf. Much like the modern-era Clan Novel series, Dark Ages features one novel focusing on each of the 13 clans of the game's medieval setting. The back of the book declares, "An Epic Begins," and while it's a little early in the series to assess whether this much is true, it seems accurate thus far.

For those who are keeping score, Gherbod Fleming penned some of the very best (arguably the best) of the novels in the Clan Novel series, published three years ago. In fact, it was seeing his name on the book that made me pick it up when I saw it, and I'm glad to say that he hasn't let me down.

As with my reviews of other series, I will focus in this review on three main points:

tone, or the general "feel" of the novel,
characterization and
plot.

In future reviews, I'll also reflect on how the novel itself contributes (or doesn't) to the overall series of novels. Given that this is the first, instead I will wrap up with a few thoughts on what this novel may indicate about the rest of the books.

Tone

I'm going to digress momentarily by explaining why it took Gherbod's name on the cover of Nosferatu to get me to pick up this book, and why it's vaguely difficult for me to review it. There are two main reasons: the first novel of the Clan Novel series was, frankly, awful - awful enough that I, a grown man, can't just drop it and move on after over three years - and I hate Nosferatu, both as a player and as a Storyteller. I cannot express my wretched displeasure upon seeing (a) the first novel of another series staring at me from the bookstore shelf and (b) seeing NOSFERATU written down the spine. Seeing Gherbod Fleming credited as the author went a long way towards stopping the faint tic that appeared at one corner of my face, but it didn't quite calm me down. I distinctly remember, in all seriousness, my mouth going completely dry.

The point here is that Gherbod Fleming did it again - he saved my interest in the series right when it was ready to flicker, before I'd even read the first page.

One of Fleming's strengths, to which I returned again and again in reviews of the Clan Novels series, is his ability to tell a story in such a way that it doesn't insult the reader's intelligence. He has a tremendous gift for description and for talking up to the reader. These are both unbelievably vital both in starting a series out on the right foot and in establishing a series set eight centuries ago in a place distant from the vast majority of readers. It is of utmost importance that the reader be given a sense of what Constantinople is like - and, given some of the shoddy history we're taught regarding the medieval era, what it wasn't like - without being treated to a history lecture rather than a novel. Fleming's ability to drop a quick few sentences yet construct a very vivid picture is put to good use here. In the first three sentences of the novel, comprising about 65 words, the author manages to evoke all five senses and gives us an immediate visual. If there were magical machines that measured and certified literary efficiency, they would be calibrated using that introduction. My point here is that Fleming manages to give us an image of Constantinople that persists throughout the book. He continues to make use of very precise, surgical strokes of description to set up places and people for us, and it largely keeps the book moving along when another writer might have gotten bogged down describing minor details or lecturing us on the sociopolitical circumstances of the dual rulerships of church and state in the time of this story.

Now, I must criticize. There are times when the descriptions do get a little florid. Never does Fleming descend into full-on purple prose, but he certainly blushes from time to time. To some degree I think this is part and parcel of the very different voice Fleming chose to use for this novel - another good decision given that it's a very different setting. There's a necessity to weigh down the text a little, suggesting the formal, overstated tenor we typically imagine when thinking of how people spoke to one another in that time period. There's also, in Fleming's very necessary choice to pound us with the importance of religion and all matters spiritual in the lives and unlives of these characters, a sort of tendency to let fly with the righteous adjectation - the endless description of moments of pure religious ecstasy which can never be well-described. By that I don't mean that Fleming fails to describe these moments of spiritual apex. I do mean, however, that it's a break from his usual method of injecting an extremely concise description, all sharp edges and straight lines, in his other books.

Overall, though, this novel is just what I would expect: very mature, very intelligent, and it expects and rewards the same in its reader. This is the sort of good, solid tone that can make a reader a better writer. Fleming takes pains to demonstrate that this is not just another Vampire novel, this is a Dark Ages novel, and does so without lecturing us. There are few who can do something like that.

Characterization

Fleming's greatest strength, I think, is in characterization. In the modern-era novels, every one of his characters was deep and interesting and alive. He's the sort of writer with whom I would love to roleplay, because I imagine there would always be something intriguing about the people he created. The main character of this novel is Malachite, a Nosferatu who in life was a bishop of the Orthodox church. Malachite is the first character we meet in the novel, and we get a pretty clear picture of his motivations and concerns before we even know his name. I don't want to speak at too great a length on Malachite, because Malachite's motivations are so central to the plot of the storyline. However, I can comfortably state that Malachite's motivations and concerns are very well-developed and equally well-presented. The worries and hopes and fears and doubts of a priest cum vampire elder are all explained and witnessed in ways that seem natural and believable. I had no problem accepting Malachite's emotional range and how he expressed them. In fact, I rather liked Malachite by the end of the novel. Referencing my earlier expressed hatred for Nosferatu characters, this is no mean feat on Fleming's part. He not only wrote a believable priest, a believable vampire and an interesting Nosferatu, he wrote them as one character.

Other characters in the novel are plentiful but almost entirely incredibly minor. The other major players have few lines and almost entirely exist to demonstrate their devotion to Malachite. We do get a few interesting tidbits on characters I hope to see pop up later, without their stealing the story away from Malachite. The only other truly vital character is Lady Alexia, a Cappadocian who enters the story a good ways in as someone Malachite distrusts but feels he needs as he moves through the events around him. Frankly, I found Lady Alexia to be the most disappointing character in the story. She was as flimsy as a tissue and translucent as glass, and I was disappointed to see through her in about eight nanoseconds. I realize that to some degree she's supposed to serve as an object lesson in the machinations of elders, and that requires her to be somewhat transparent, but she still felt a little thin for my tastes. It seemed to me that there was an opportunity to exploit a manipulative member of the Clan of Death to show some good, old-fashioned chewing of the fat between Malachite, someone whose eternal unlife is devoted to personal questions of the eternal afterlife and condemnation, and Alexia, a vampire whose clan has heaps of first-hand knowledge of the afterlife and an obsession with discovering exactly what forms it might take. Perhaps that simply didn't fit into Fleming's plan for the novel, but I think it would have gone a long way towards beefing up Alexia's character and making her role in the story a little more meaningful.

One of my favorite side-characters was that of Basil, one of the Nosferatu knights. I really can't speak about him without ruining his whole part of the story for you, so I'll simply say that I hope to see more of him as the series progresses.

All in all, none of the other characters - even the two-dimensional Alexia - matters much. Malachite is overwhelmingly the important character in this novel, and he's every bit as developed as I could have asked, and more. If there's a genuine failing in characterization, it's in erring very slightly on the side of keeping Malachite in the spotlight and a very debatable degree of error at that.

Plot & The Series Overall

Really, what can I say without giving away the storyline? I can say this: that this series will be, I think, very different from the modern-era Clan Novel series, and for the better. The modern era novels smacked the reader around with the Storyline of the Magical McGuffin. As far as I can tell, this series is blissfully free of such Temple of Elemental Evil chicanery. This novel's plot contains no serious holes (there are some rough bits where I wondered why something was happening the way it was happening, but nothing that made me clench my teeth while I fought to keep going), is well-told and kept me interested in the outcome.

My one really major complaint is that the novel depicts flagellants in Constantinople in 1204. I certainly hope to be corrected if I'm wrong on this, but self-flagellation as penance wasn't popular practice for at least a half-century after the time of the novel. While there were certainly very severe monastic orders which practiced it before this time, and it's easily explained that Cainites would have influenced this trend (what vampire wouldn't dig mortals who turn themselves into gushing buffets out of religious conviction?), it was the only thing that majorly stuck in my craw. A simple mention of the Cainite influence would have completely satisfied me.

Regardless of what that complaint might suggest, this is overall a very even, thoughtful book concerned with matters of belief and responsibility, not who does what and when. It's no punch-out action fest. Rather, it's a slow and steady tale about what people will do for what they believe in, especially when belief is really all they have. That sounds corny, but it's true. Much of the novel's action consists of walking and thinking - and that's it. It has a few action sequences, but the meat of the story is told much like the story's contents itself: Fleming hopes you trust him enough to walk along at a steady pace, thinking about what he tells you, and it makes for a very good read. If the rest of this series is like this novel - and one can only hope that the first novel of the series is being used to set up, at the very beginning, that this one will be different - then this series is going to be very interesting indeed.

In the absence of the Eye of Whatever being waved in my face with a big, pulsing, neon sign attached reading, "HERE'S WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT," I find myself paying much closer attention to events as they unfold. I also find myself itching with curiosity to figure out what the story is about. Imagine that, a series that challenges its readers! I'm pleasantly stunned.

After all, this is the stuff I was raised to believe Vampire is about: belief, dreams, loss, trial. The vampire games in which I've played have all had their combat sequences, sure, but mainly what gets me about this game is the chance to explore concepts so central to the real world. It's never the stats that interest me, or the magical whatsits with their wonky powers - it's the characters, what drives them, and what of their motivations I see in myself and the people around me. Fleming could strip out all the supernatural elements of this novel and still have a very, very interesting story, and really, how many other fantasy, sci-fi or horror novels can say the same?

Dark Ages: Nosferatu
Dark Ages: Nosferatu Capsule Review by Michael G. Williams on 05/02/03 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty) Nosferatu is an interesting, thoughtful novel that sets a very different tone from what I might have expected or feared, turning into a sincere exploration of enjoyably mature themes. Product: Dark Ages: Nosferatu Author: Gherbod Fleming Category: Novel Company/Publisher: White Wolf Line: Dark Ages: Vampire Cost: $6.95 Page count: 264 Year published: 2002 ISBN: 1-58846-817-8 SKU: WW11205 Comp copy?: no Capsule Review by Michael G. Williams on 05/02/03 Genre tags: Historical Horror Conspiracy Vampire Gothic Diceless	Dark Ages: Nosferatu, by Gherbod Fleming, is the first novel in a new 13-part series by White Wolf. Much like the modern-era Clan Novel series, Dark Ages features one novel focusing on each of the 13 clans of the game's medieval setting. The back of the book declares, "An Epic Begins," and while it's a little early in the series to assess whether this much is true, it seems accurate thus far. For those who are keeping score, Gherbod Fleming penned some of the very best (arguably the best) of the novels in the Clan Novel series, published three years ago. In fact, it was seeing his name on the book that made me pick it up when I saw it, and I'm glad to say that he hasn't let me down. As with my reviews of other series, I will focus in this review on three main points: tone, or the general "feel" of the novel, characterization and plot. In future reviews, I'll also reflect on how the novel itself contributes (or doesn't) to the overall series of novels. Given that this is the first, instead I will wrap up with a few thoughts on what this novel may indicate about the rest of the books. Tone I'm going to digress momentarily by explaining why it took Gherbod's name on the cover of Nosferatu to get me to pick up this book, and why it's vaguely difficult for me to review it. There are two main reasons: the first novel of the Clan Novel series was, frankly, awful - awful enough that I, a grown man, can't just drop it and move on after over three years - and I hate Nosferatu, both as a player and as a Storyteller. I cannot express my wretched displeasure upon seeing (a) the first novel of another series staring at me from the bookstore shelf and (b) seeing NOSFERATU written down the spine. Seeing Gherbod Fleming credited as the author went a long way towards stopping the faint tic that appeared at one corner of my face, but it didn't quite calm me down. I distinctly remember, in all seriousness, my mouth going completely dry. The point here is that Gherbod Fleming did it again - he saved my interest in the series right when it was ready to flicker, before I'd even read the first page. One of Fleming's strengths, to which I returned again and again in reviews of the Clan Novels series, is his ability to tell a story in such a way that it doesn't insult the reader's intelligence. He has a tremendous gift for description and for talking up to the reader. These are both unbelievably vital both in starting a series out on the right foot and in establishing a series set eight centuries ago in a place distant from the vast majority of readers. It is of utmost importance that the reader be given a sense of what Constantinople is like - and, given some of the shoddy history we're taught regarding the medieval era, what it wasn't like - without being treated to a history lecture rather than a novel. Fleming's ability to drop a quick few sentences yet construct a very vivid picture is put to good use here. In the first three sentences of the novel, comprising about 65 words, the author manages to evoke all five senses and gives us an immediate visual. If there were magical machines that measured and certified literary efficiency, they would be calibrated using that introduction. My point here is that Fleming manages to give us an image of Constantinople that persists throughout the book. He continues to make use of very precise, surgical strokes of description to set up places and people for us, and it largely keeps the book moving along when another writer might have gotten bogged down describing minor details or lecturing us on the sociopolitical circumstances of the dual rulerships of church and state in the time of this story. Now, I must criticize. There are times when the descriptions do get a little florid. Never does Fleming descend into full-on purple prose, but he certainly blushes from time to time. To some degree I think this is part and parcel of the very different voice Fleming chose to use for this novel - another good decision given that it's a very different setting. There's a necessity to weigh down the text a little, suggesting the formal, overstated tenor we typically imagine when thinking of how people spoke to one another in that time period. There's also, in Fleming's very necessary choice to pound us with the importance of religion and all matters spiritual in the lives and unlives of these characters, a sort of tendency to let fly with the righteous adjectation - the endless description of moments of pure religious ecstasy which can never be well-described. By that I don't mean that Fleming fails to describe these moments of spiritual apex. I do mean, however, that it's a break from his usual method of injecting an extremely concise description, all sharp edges and straight lines, in his other books. Overall, though, this novel is just what I would expect: very mature, very intelligent, and it expects and rewards the same in its reader. This is the sort of good, solid tone that can make a reader a better writer. Fleming takes pains to demonstrate that this is not just another Vampire novel, this is a Dark Ages novel, and does so without lecturing us. There are few who can do something like that. Characterization Fleming's greatest strength, I think, is in characterization. In the modern-era novels, every one of his characters was deep and interesting and alive. He's the sort of writer with whom I would love to roleplay, because I imagine there would always be something intriguing about the people he created. The main character of this novel is Malachite, a Nosferatu who in life was a bishop of the Orthodox church. Malachite is the first character we meet in the novel, and we get a pretty clear picture of his motivations and concerns before we even know his name. I don't want to speak at too great a length on Malachite, because Malachite's motivations are so central to the plot of the storyline. However, I can comfortably state that Malachite's motivations and concerns are very well-developed and equally well-presented. The worries and hopes and fears and doubts of a priest cum vampire elder are all explained and witnessed in ways that seem natural and believable. I had no problem accepting Malachite's emotional range and how he expressed them. In fact, I rather liked Malachite by the end of the novel. Referencing my earlier expressed hatred for Nosferatu characters, this is no mean feat on Fleming's part. He not only wrote a believable priest, a believable vampire and an interesting Nosferatu, he wrote them as one character. Other characters in the novel are plentiful but almost entirely incredibly minor. The other major players have few lines and almost entirely exist to demonstrate their devotion to Malachite. We do get a few interesting tidbits on characters I hope to see pop up later, without their stealing the story away from Malachite. The only other truly vital character is Lady Alexia, a Cappadocian who enters the story a good ways in as someone Malachite distrusts but feels he needs as he moves through the events around him. Frankly, I found Lady Alexia to be the most disappointing character in the story. She was as flimsy as a tissue and translucent as glass, and I was disappointed to see through her in about eight nanoseconds. I realize that to some degree she's supposed to serve as an object lesson in the machinations of elders, and that requires her to be somewhat transparent, but she still felt a little thin for my tastes. It seemed to me that there was an opportunity to exploit a manipulative member of the Clan of Death to show some good, old-fashioned chewing of the fat between Malachite, someone whose eternal unlife is devoted to personal questions of the eternal afterlife and condemnation, and Alexia, a vampire whose clan has heaps of first-hand knowledge of the afterlife and an obsession with discovering exactly what forms it might take. Perhaps that simply didn't fit into Fleming's plan for the novel, but I think it would have gone a long way towards beefing up Alexia's character and making her role in the story a little more meaningful. One of my favorite side-characters was that of Basil, one of the Nosferatu knights. I really can't speak about him without ruining his whole part of the story for you, so I'll simply say that I hope to see more of him as the series progresses. All in all, none of the other characters - even the two-dimensional Alexia - matters much. Malachite is overwhelmingly the important character in this novel, and he's every bit as developed as I could have asked, and more. If there's a genuine failing in characterization, it's in erring very slightly on the side of keeping Malachite in the spotlight and a very debatable degree of error at that. Plot & The Series Overall Really, what can I say without giving away the storyline? I can say this: that this series will be, I think, very different from the modern-era Clan Novel series, and for the better. The modern era novels smacked the reader around with the Storyline of the Magical McGuffin. As far as I can tell, this series is blissfully free of such Temple of Elemental Evil chicanery. This novel's plot contains no serious holes (there are some rough bits where I wondered why something was happening the way it was happening, but nothing that made me clench my teeth while I fought to keep going), is well-told and kept me interested in the outcome. My one really major complaint is that the novel depicts flagellants in Constantinople in 1204. I certainly hope to be corrected if I'm wrong on this, but self-flagellation as penance wasn't popular practice for at least a half-century after the time of the novel. While there were certainly very severe monastic orders which practiced it before this time, and it's easily explained that Cainites would have influenced this trend (what vampire wouldn't dig mortals who turn themselves into gushing buffets out of religious conviction?), it was the only thing that majorly stuck in my craw. A simple mention of the Cainite influence would have completely satisfied me. Regardless of what that complaint might suggest, this is overall a very even, thoughtful book concerned with matters of belief and responsibility, not who does what and when. It's no punch-out action fest. Rather, it's a slow and steady tale about what people will do for what they believe in, especially when belief is really all they have. That sounds corny, but it's true. Much of the novel's action consists of walking and thinking - and that's it. It has a few action sequences, but the meat of the story is told much like the story's contents itself: Fleming hopes you trust him enough to walk along at a steady pace, thinking about what he tells you, and it makes for a very good read. If the rest of this series is like this novel - and one can only hope that the first novel of the series is being used to set up, at the very beginning, that this one will be different - then this series is going to be very interesting indeed. In the absence of the Eye of Whatever being waved in my face with a big, pulsing, neon sign attached reading, "HERE'S WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT," I find myself paying much closer attention to events as they unfold. I also find myself itching with curiosity to figure out what the story is about. Imagine that, a series that challenges its readers! I'm pleasantly stunned. After all, this is the stuff I was raised to believe Vampire is about: belief, dreams, loss, trial. The vampire games in which I've played have all had their combat sequences, sure, but mainly what gets me about this game is the chance to explore concepts so central to the real world. It's never the stats that interest me, or the magical whatsits with their wonky powers - it's the characters, what drives them, and what of their motivations I see in myself and the people around me. Fleming could strip out all the supernatural elements of this novel and still have a very, very interesting story, and really, how many other fantasy, sci-fi or horror novels can say the same?