Review of Clan Novel: Tzimisce

This book is way better than I expected it to be. I came to the book with low expectations; books written to interpret other media - films, plays, games, etc. are usually quite boring. I always have the sense that the author is serving two masters: the story she wants to tell, and the media she is committed to interpreting. Add to that the difficulty of writing one novel in a series of 13, and I think the author could be forgiven much on the "many cooks spoil the stew" principal. E. Griffin however writes with a style that kept me turning pages, and although I was frequently aware of the many cooks hovering over him, I kept reading till the end. I'm likely to try to buy the previous book and the next book. That's all a publisher has any right to ask of an author.

Having offered that praise, I'm not entirely sure why the book kept me turning the pages. This book also represents everything bad about Vampire: the Masquerade. I love the game, and would like to play it again, if I could find some people who don't regard spandex as the inalienable right of the undead, but about a chapter in, I wanted to grab the pointless, posturing characters, shake them, and stake them while screaming "What's the point?". It would be unfair to compare their interior monologues and their resultant actions to "How many angels could dance on the head of a pin?". The angel debate at least had some ulterior motive and implications.

I finally understand why so many of my friends refuse to play Vampire. If the game is only about who gets to be/serve/defeat/overturn the Prince, then I think I agree with them. Throughout the book, the characters speak their parts, represent their clans and causes, but leave no impression that they have the strength of will or complexity of character needed to survive death. None of the characters are sympathetic enough to enable me to care if they survive. The one exception to this rule, the interaction between Vysokos and an Assamite who goes by the name Parmenides, is murky and obscure. I'd like to know how it turns out, but I'm motivated more by curiosity than by real identification with either of the characters. This is a pity, because this could be the strongest part of the book.

In the hands of a truly gifted author, this absence of sympathetic characters would have been an opportunity to examine the theme of humanity. Back in the old days when I first read the game, it was about humanity; the spandex crowd has deleted that word from their character sheets, except as a way of getting more actions during the daytime. I'll grant you that this book is about the Sabbat, and the Sabbat don't value humanity. But even among the Camarilla there are no vampires who care about art, love, wisdom, philosophy or any of the other things which make us human. I would have found it a stronger book if the theme of humanity, which is so central to the game, were depicted.

Griffin however is a good writer; he makes effective use of visual image and metaphor, and he keeps the story moving; things happen. I wanted to find out how the story turned out. Would the Sabbat take control? Could the Camarilla survive? Who would make it? How would they make it? And that is the most important thing to say about the novel. I kept turning the pages, and I'd like to read the book before and after.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)