Dark Ages: Assamite is the second in White Wolf's
Dark Ages series of novels. These thirteen novels attempt to portray a bit of the existence of each of the thirteen clans and, in so doing, give the reader a better understanding of the world in which the game is set. The back exclaims, "THE HIGHEST STAKES," tongue planted firmly in cheek, and despite the awful pun, it doesn't lie.
This novel is Stefan Petrucha's first contribution to a Vampire series. As with other novels, with this review I will focus on:
- tone, or general "feel" of the novel
- characterization and
- plot.
Tone
I should start by mentioning that, much as was the case with Dark Ages: Nosferatu, no part of me relished reading a novel about Assamites. If I hate Nosferatu as a player and Storyteller, I loathe Assamites. I have, in fact, rejected them from every game I have ever run, period. There is nothing better, in terms of Munchkin-detection, than asking if anyone wishes to play an Assamite. The simple gleam in a player's eye is enough to spell, in large, block letters: COMBAT ADDICT. I say with all po-mo irony and self-declared elitist snobbery firmly engaged that the very coolness of Assamites makes them terribly lame.
And yet again, I was very pleasantly surprised.
Nosferatu blessed us with a slow, thoughtful novel that revolves around one character's examination of that which he finds most important: his faith in the powers above him. Assamite, in turn, gives us a very complex and enjoyable story that asks the question, now that you know what to believe in, how do you follow it? You've got your faith - now what? With this as the central question of the novel, yet again we get a mature theme that asks questions those of us in reality try to answer each and every day. I've debated whether to open the can of worms that comes with calling this novel "timely," given its storyline of Christianity vs. Islam and characters whose conflict is part of the political, religious and economic conflict between the West and the Middle East, but the more I shy away from calling it "timely," the more I realize that description is true. If the novel didn't hit strike some sensitive chords for me, why would I shy away from talking about it, after all? Oh, this novel is good, it's intelligent, it made me think long and hard about the world today and the world 800 years ago, and how little things have changed. When I finished it, I had to put it down and simply sit and think for a while. When's the last time a gaming novel did that?
In short, Assamite was way more than I thought it would be - way more than I had hoped it would be. It drilled right down to some of the core questions that still define international relations and foreign policy debates in capitols around the world. It did it very intelligently - and it expected the reader to be just as mature as its storyline. It doesn't hold the reader's hand and tell them really, people are just people and we should all get along. Instead, it just shows us people and lets us decide what we think of them for ourselves, without shying away from both what we love and what we hate in those we sometimes think of as our foes.
Another very mature - and potentially controversial - aspect of this novel's tone and theme is the treatment of religion. Almost every character is extremely devoted to their own religion. Those religions were something which came upon them suddenly and took them wholly, changing everything about how they saw the world and for the rest of their lives ruling over every perspective and attitude they could possess. Religion ends up being something which enters them suddenly, changes them forever, and alters their entire lives. In this way, religion makes for a great metaphor for vampirism.
Even more interestingly, maybe Petrucha meant it the other way around.
Characterization
Assamites are, of course, the main characters of this novel. Petrucha doesn't just give us one Assamite as a centerpiece, however - he gives us three. With Amala, Fajr and Sihr, we get to see an assassin, a scholar and a sorcerer, the three main archetypes of the clan in the Dark Ages. Each of these characters are interesting and interestingly developed - Fajr doesn't change much throughout the storyline, but he remains very interesting to watch. Sihr is something of a secondary character as well, though we get to see more of his motivations, perceptions and thoughts, and we get to see some changes in his personality by the end of the story. These are well-presented, well-explained and well-demonstrated. Sihr is a very strong character - not overbearing, but very well defined. He can be very dark and complex, but very light and likeable as well. I felt like we pretty much got the whole 360 degrees on Sihr, and that he's a bit of a supporting role should indicate good things.
Amala is far and away the main character of the novel, and Petrucha simply knocked my socks off with her. She's both likeable for a variety of reasons and very fairly presented. Petrucha doesn't force us to approve of her - he simply shows us what she's like and leaves us to our own conclusions. Petrucha doesn't just hand us a Buffy-o-Matic ass-kicking female lead, however. Through the course of the novel, we get to see a tremendous, shockingly deep representation of Amala's emotional range and motivations, all portrayed in a believable and understandable manner. Even when I disagreed with her, I respected the character's strict adherence to discipline and her searches for meaning and understanding. Everything she does makes sense in the end - even with some very surprising twists. I love this sort of writing. I was presented with a character I could easily hate: Assamite assassin off to smite the Noble Ventrue(tm). Instead of something trite and predictable, I got something very, very complex and rewarding. I honestly felt rewarded for reading the novel, by the end, and that's a rare thing in any genre.
The other main character is Sir Hugh, a Ventrue Templar in the region as part of the failed Crusade which sacked Constantinople both in reality and in Dark Ages: Nosferatu. Again, I was very pleasantly surprised. Hugh could have been nothing but a bucket of square-jawed angst, and instead he turns out to be very interesting to watch as his character, and the influences on him, change and adapt to new situations. I kept trying to second-guess what Hugh knew and what he didn't, and ended up being wrong every time. Again, I'm tremendously pleased. I really could not tell what was going to happen in this novel, or how I should feel about Sir Hugh's character, and I love that feeling. Rather than doing the thinking for the reader, Stefan Petrucha keeps handing us raw data on people, places, themes and motivations, and forcing us to do the math. That's the sort of respect you don't get from many authors, and it made this book, and these characters, extremely fun.
There are a host of minor players in the novel, all of whom serve some particular, usually flat and obvious purpose. I have to say that these characters, two-dimensional and see-through, and who are more or less wheeled on and off the novel's stage with all the flourish they deserve, were not the high point. They're interesting - for 2-D one-shot characters, they're great - but they're not the meat of the story. The best one, by far, was Kosmas Pangalos, a Brujah from Constantinople. Pay attention to his bits, they're worth it.
The most important thing for me, in terms of this novel's characterization, was common to all the characters. They all are people who have a strict and unforgiving set of ethics and morals, and all of them do their damnedest to adhere to those precepts. These aren't people paying amusing lip-service to their gods as an aside, these are people who worry night and day whether what they do is worthy of their faith, and whether they are worthy of their flavor of God's approval. These are not people who are in a religion, they are religious people. It's not presented in a hokey-jokey, Ned Flanders kind of way, either; they are sincerely worried for their souls, sincerely concerned with seeing their God in the world around them and doing what they think their God wants. If they perceive their religion as requiring them to be in conflict with someone of another religion, so be it - but they don't relish the violence, they simply wish to be "good." How different is that from any fanatic alive today, regardless of what religion they claim to support?
This is where the book really opened up for me, and where characterization locked in with tone: these characters' lives are mirrors and microcosms of the conflicts of their faiths. In this way, they both take part in and represent the larger conflicts going on in the storyline: Orthodox vs. Catholic, Christian vs. Muslim, knight vs. assassin, "civilized" vs. "barbaric." There's more to it than that, though - they also show us an important lesson. While they themselves may decry the madness of one civilization marching hundreds of miles to fight another for the sake of whether one man was a prophet or the Messiah, they still do it. That, right there, is the point of this novel, that the only reason any large group of people does something stupid is because they each, as individuals, decide to go along with the stupid idea in the first place. Oh, sure, there are mitigating factors for many of them - too easy to use them as excuses. That's the lesson of this novel, both about the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East in 1204 and in 2003 - people are responsible for the actions of people. A person is responsible for herself or himself. A group of people does something idiotic and destructive because each of them decides to do something idiotic and destructive; they simply do that thing together. One side of a conflict can demonize the other all it wants, but that side, and its opponents, are still just people who have decided to take part in something. What's preventing them from walking away? Nothing but their own unwillingness, that's what. The tragedy - both in this novel and in reality - is that it's often easiest to do something idiotic and destructive, especially when everyone else around you is doing it, too. Kosmas begs to be a soldier rather than a blacksmith because it's easier to fight. A mob frenzies because it's easier than thinking. Cultures fight wars because it's easier than trying to fix the problems that led to war. Idiocy and destruction are cheap and, best of all, easy. That idea is at the core of so many characters in this novel, and is voiced repeatedly by one supporting role or another to the main characters. The beauty of this novel, and of the characters in it, is that the main characters refuse to accept that. Instead, they try to turn back that beastly impulse in all of us, aiming instead to think of a better solution.
Plot
Again, I can't say much without spoiling the novel. I will say this, then: it's believable, and it's fun. Petrucha gives us a soft slide into the 13th century by starting out in the 21st and then bringing it back there. Story-within-a-story is a too-familiar gimmick, but he puts it to good use here. The chronology of the novel jumps around a bit and, frankly, I found that a bit jarring. It ends up working well enough, and of course he uses it to throw a twist ending in, but the twist was so well-delivered I was thrilled. The storyline is also gloriously free of pointless action sequences. They're almost impossible to write well, and the few times Petrucha shows us Assamites doing what they theoretically do best, it's fluid and quick. In the end, this was another thoughtful, well-paced, well-told story that left me very much impressed.
I can't lie, however - there are holes. They're minor ones, and I'm not going to discuss them here because they would be major spoilers, but I will simply say that there were times when I was left to grunt and huff over a couple of liberties he takes. They could be explained well enough, I suppose, but they're still nagging me. Not so much that I couldn't stand the novel, however.
As for how this one fits into the series, I ended up very pleased. I was terrified for most of the novel that we had finally seen the Magical McGuffin and that this would devolve into yet another Jewel of the Nile with vampires, but it turned out to surprise me quite a bit. I still can't tell what the overarching storyline is, other than the lives of vampires at a time of tremendous mortal unrest, and I like that. I like it so much that I've bumped the third novel, Dark Ages: Cappadocian several places up in the pile of books I'm continually meaning to read next. Two books in, this is a much, much stronger series than the modern-era Clan Novel series, and I'm looking forward to more. Yet again, this is a novel from which every single supernatural element could be yanked, and it would still be fascinating, still relevant to our world today, still touching and still worth reading.
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