Vampire review: Love Bites

Among the many novels with the same or similar title, LOVE BITES (1995), by Margaret St. George, stands out by belonging to the Harlequin American Romance line. Not where you’d expect to find a vampire novel! At that time, vampires were hardly ever featured in category romances. Harlequin hadn't started its sadly now-defunct Nocturne line yet. This book stuck in my mind because of its quirky, humorous tone (until matters get serious and suspenseful toward the end, at least).

Kay Erickson takes a job as personal assistant to Trevor d’Laine, host of a late-night radio talk show. Long before Kitty the radio-hostess werewolf in Carrie Vaughn’s series, Trevor reaches out to the demographic of creatures of the night. Kay, of course, initially thinks his claim of vampirism is a publicity stunt. She humors his persona, accepting the title of “Renfield” playfully bestowed on all mortal sidekicks of vampires. Later she suspects him of being delusional, although of course she still finds him fun and sexy. When she suggests he should seek treatment for his delusions, he says he doesn’t want to get analyzed and “turned into one of those brooding apologetic-type vampires.” This dialogue illustrates the tone of much of the book, even though we get glimpses of darkness in the conflict between Trevor’s type of vampires, who want to coexist with humanity rather than harming people, and the type who regard us as merely prey. The night-to-night routine of a vampire and his Renfield makes fun reading, spiced by the mounting attraction between Trevor and Kay. Eventually he tells her about his early life, revealing that he hasn’t always been the carefree, well-adjusted denizen of the night he currently claims to be. When the inevitable clash with the “evil” vampire lurking in the background of the story builds to a crisis, Kay has to call in help from other Renfields.

Not only did I enjoy the humor in this novel, I liked the way Trevor relishes his vampire existence rather than wallowing in the angst-ridden lifestyle of so many of his fictional contemporaries. He has no desire to become mortal again. Nor does Kay want to become a vampire. Unlike the typical paranormal romance heroine (including most of my characters, I confess), who quickly grows to appreciate the ravishing eroticism of vampirism as such, Kay is thoroughly turned off by her first glimpse of fangs. So how can they hope to get together permanently? Trevor and his undead friends fairly evaluate the pros and cons of reverting to mortality (if that were possible), with remaining a vampire viewed as mostly preferable. I won’t give away the ending, but for any hardcore reader of the subgenre, it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Both Trevor and Kay are refreshingly different from the usual vampire hero and human heroine of the time, and the plot device of a clash between organized groups of “good” vampires who don’t harm human donors and their opponents who have no such scruples hadn’t yet become as overly familiar as it is now. The atmosphere of LOVE BITES anticipates the blended humor and suspense of Lynsay Sands’ Argeneau series. Too bad St. George didn’t write any additional vampire novels, as far as I can tell.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Vampire as Alien: Tanith Lee's Vampires

Renowned fantasy author Tanith Lee has written numerous vampire stories, taking different approaches to the myth in each work. To mention only a few: Her short work "Red as Blood," one of the best fairy tale retellings I've ever read, presents Snow White as a hereditary vampire and her stepmother, the queen, as a white witch trying to save the kingdom from the young princess's unnatural appetite. Lee's twisted Gothic romance DARK DANCE (1992), first novel in the Scarabae trilogy, centers on a woman victimized by a family from a blood-drinking species. The hyper-sexual hero, a parody of the dark, Byronic vampire aristocrat, wants her only as a breeding vessel. "Bite-Me-Not or, Fleur de Feu" portrays a very different kind of love story set in a world where a tribe of winged vampires besieges a castle, and every facet of the inhabitants' lives is shaped by fear of the monsters. The captured and imprisoned vampire, although apparently intelligent, can't speak, and he looks and acts so inhuman as to be more like an exotic animal than a person. Yet a serving maid in the castle becomes fascinated by him, helps him escape, and runs away with him She sees him through the lens of the courtly love romances she has heard, while he thinks of her as a sort of pet.

Lee creates another kind of alien vampire in the science fiction novel SABELLA OR THE BLOOD STONE (1980). (Warning: Major spoilers.) The narrator grows up thinking herself human but aberrant. As a Terran child living on an Earth-colonized world, Nova Mars, she stumbles onto ruins left by the original inhabitants. Her vampiric behavior dates from her discovery of a red jewel in the ruins. After years of drinking blood and sometimes killing, she meets a man she cannot and does not need to kill. Jace, brother of one of her victims, reveals to Sabella that she is actually an alien who, years in the past, took over the dying child Sabella's body and memories. Yet, because all the girl's thoughts and feelings live in this new form, the vampire, in a sense, is also truly Sabella. Jace reassures her that, while neither alien nor human, she is in some way both. Thanks to him, she learns to live without killing and to accept her past without self-destructive guilt. Jace reveals that he, too, found the ruins in childhood and became absorbed into an alien being. He alone can safely nourish her, for they evolved that relationship in their former life as members of the extinct species. Sabella speculates on how this relationship might have worked in the ancient past, when Nova Mars was an inhabited but dying planet: "Of the little water and little food there was, one would eat and drink, and when he was strong, the other would take from him the vital element which food and drink had made -- his blood....A system that requires a careful pairing, a creation of partners, who could permit in love what could never be permitted in hate or greed." Learning this symbiotic relationship, learning to share in love rather than seize in greed, Sabella avoids succumbing to despair.

Her solution to the quandary of being a bloodsucking monster depends on her union with Jace, the one living person who can serve as her symbiont. Also, their relationship requires her to let Jace dominate her, at least temporarily, until with his help she will learn "a discipline beyond myself." This male dominance isn't meant to be permanent, though. By way of balance, Sabella foresees a future in which she will decide when and where to procreate the children who will revive their species. She also conceives an ecological vision of a new era when her offspring may revitalize, even resurrect the desert planet. She grows into one of many fictional vampires who discover the value of symbiosis rather than destruction of their prey.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.