Bookish-Dreaming

Reading a Book in Twenty-Four Hours: The Greyfriar

by

Gillian Polack

49b

Have you ever looked at the picture of the front cover of a book and, without looking at either the author’s name or the title, without knowing the genre or the imprint, have you ever looked at a book’s cover and said: this book I must read?

I did that, a few weeks ago. The book in question was Vampire Empire, Book One: The Greyfriar, by Clay and Susan Griffith. Just now, in the mail, a review copy of it appeared.

Since I had already judged the book by its cover, I thought it would be fun to write my thoughts on the book itself as I go. Rarely have I had such an intense reaction to a cover—the last time I felt so urgently was The Ghosts of Manhattan. (I still would like to write a book for that cover—it’s a magic cover, by Benjamin Carré.) I've also wondered, in my quiet moments, what it would be like to find a book with a cover that pulled me in and got me dreaming. With a cover that I wanted to write a book about myself. Chris McGrath and Pyr have given me that cover.  The cover and its notes suggest that the book is an alternate history, set in a world split between the temperate climes (where humans are fodder) and the tropics (where humans have developed steampunk empires).

So this is it. Not a regular review, but a notebook of my thoughts as and when they happen.

First of all, I was a bit surprised that the book was a vampire one. I know I read that somewhere, but the cover stuck in my mind as dark steampunk. The back cover suggests that there is indeed somewhat of steampunk about it, and that also it covers parts of the world that are not usually met in vampire novels. It’s an alternate future, and a bleak and bloody alternate future at that.

Sunday morning, first notes: I just read the first chapters. I found it very hard to stop, put down the book and come in here to take notes.

It’s steampunk for certain, but, unlike much steampunk, the first fifty pages of The Greyfriar show a novel where every word counts, where every aspect is tightly crafted. Already I have a strong sense of five characters (one vampire, four human), of a world where humanity lost out (and by how much). For the record, it also shows that the writers are North American, not only because of their use of words like “momentarily” but because of their entire lack of understanding of how important the British Empire was to the region extending from Alexandria to India and South East Asia in 1870, and how little strength Japan had. This is a world shaped by a particular world-view and a very specifically North American historical sensibility.

The alternate history would work better, I suspect, if the separation from our history had taken place fifty years later, after the British Empire had faded somewhat, not with the changes happening when it was at its height. Although that would muck up the technology and make the steampunk aspect less possible.

Now that I’ve had that thought, I want to know what other alternate histories are possible, having a vampire problem of the sort Griffith and Griffith envisage, but with the writers coming from different backgrounds with a different understanding of history—for the record, Australia has not made an appearance at all in the book so far, and nor has anything Jewish, but there are good strong characters both male and female and not all characters are beautifully pale—so they're doing a bunch of thinking but still see the world somewhat differently to me, especially as Australia would be in a lovely position to defend itself against their cold-loving vampires.

This is the thing about alternate history; the moment a writer makes an assumption, a reader will test it against their own background and their own preferences. I like strong women in my novels, so I tested The Greyfriar against that and it did well. I have a little knowledge of how the British Empire operated around 1870—I’m not a specialist in it, but a generalist who’s an historian—and so I have strong views about what would happen in the scenario envisaged. I test my own knowledge of the period and of different regions and with my own sense of geography—Alexandria is defined as tropical, for instance when for me tropical is more equatorial—the African countries would play a huge role in fighting vampires, and the British Empire would flourish right down to Sydney. The fight would be over the south-east of Australia and over New Zealand. This is how I see it, if the vampires loved cold and wanted to subjugate humans.

I always do this with alternate history, work out where it diverges from the possibilities of history as I see the possibilities of history. I am as much a history addict as a book addict, so this is inevitable. The trick is whether the narrative is good enough to keep me reading even when I find whacking great holes, or whether it’s strong enough to make me think “I might be wrong about this” or whether I spend the whole novel carping. At this stage, the book is as good as its cover. What this means is that I’m shaking my head at the historical choices, but I’m waiting to see what arguments the Griffiths put forward for their view. It may be that it’s not a view derived from a US view of history, but a carefully reasoned alternate Earth and that I’m missing crucial factors so early on. The big thing is that the writing is good enough to make me waive judgment until I find out.

Stage Two: I didn’t finish at a natural climax this time: I finished when the phone rang. I’m being picked up in less than a half hour, so this report is brief and covers only about twenty pages.

Africa has been explained. I love it that they have different countries in Africa—it bugs me when writers see it as a continent but not as countries. We’re also getting to see what has happened to religion in this alternate reality. It’s not a complex ‘what has happened’ at this stage. Speculative fiction as a whole tends to have an uneasy relationship with religion and mostly defines it in terms of popular (or unpopular) Christianity. I’m going to watch and see what these writers do with the religious element in the novel.

Right now my biggest concern is that the text hasn’t been quite so tightly edited as it was initially. Little slips only: Marseille/Marseilles (although there might be a logic behind the dual spelling (for instance, the city-state as opposed to the city itself), words used twice in different contexts in following sentences. Not enough to affect the quality of the book, but it’s the sort of thing my brain notices. A perfect book for me has no small unnecessary repetitions or clumsy sentences or inconsistent namings. I still like reading good books that have these things, but I can’t immerse myself so cleanly in the world the writer is devising. I’m hoping the line editing will go back to its original quality. I’m also reminding myself that this is a review copy.

The trick with review copies is that some of them are finals, but others lack the final stage of corrections and this sort of minor thing might have been picked up in the final stage. There’s nothing screamingly wrong about it—it’s not even bad writing. It’s just not as elegant and whenever I hit an inelegance or a minor inconsistency my editing brain switches on and it takes me out of the story. In the scale of annoyances, a cover where the hero has the wrong hair colour is far, far worse.

Note the third: I’m being picked up any minute, but I just want to sneak in a last thought before I go. Steampunk has always been, to me, kind of a Society for Creative Anachronism’s view of the nineteenth century. Victorian England as we kinda wished it would have happened, with all the wonder in machinery and all the pomp and just a bit of supernatural. This book may be set in 2020, but it fits this model of steampunk beautifully. The writers take joy in the ships and in the hierarchies and in individuals who subvert hierarchies. It hasn’t much to do with real societies, but it’s a splendid concept all the same and it works well in fiction. It gives it circumstance and exoticism and a feeling of Empire. Some steampunk is critical of societies and serves a social purpose. Some is merely Jolly Good Fun. This novel is a bit of both, I think.

I’m off to party (end of year, local writers having an indoor picnic, in case you were wondering). See you on the other side.

And now for another note: I’m a third of the way through the book and I think the number of notes I write will diminish from about now. This is because I’ve reached the stage where the shape of the book is clear. This means I know I’m going to get drawn in very soon and won’t be distracted by phone calls and parties.

The Greyfriar has taken a superhero turn. There are good guys and bad guys and it’s reached the stage where we find out that things aren’t quite as they seem (which was hinted at quite early on, so I’m not giving anything crucial away). The important thing is that intervals are shaping up for the fight and armies and populations hurt and die but are not the focal point. Superhero stuff, where a person decides the fate of a nation. The special qualities (good and bad) of the various fate-of-nation characters are beginning to show clearly, too. The only disappointment in this is that the arch-villain looks as if he might be significantly less nuanced than I had hoped. While this doesn’t matter much when a clash on the grand scale is building, I personally love it when all the characters have real reason for what they do and are complex and fascinating.

Note to commemorate the halfway mark: I haven’t yet talked about the vampireness of this book. It is, after all, vampire steampunk.

I was on a panel the other week and had to introduce several writers. The first, Emmet Spain, writes what he describes as “dark vampires”—nothing delightful or romantic about them. Then there was a writer who wrote about a very cute and funny vampire baby. I explained that if there were a third vampire writer on the panel, they would have to write a romantic vampire, with sparkles, because that was the obvious progression. The Greyfriar doesn’t fit this picture.

It’s dark. The vampires are parasites and evil. There’s no doubt about it. Their savagery and their lack of civilised values is entirely clear. At the same time, however, it’s becoming clear that the vampires are evolving. The ancient vampires are more brutish, and it’s the modern vampire that has realised the advantages in farming their food. There are strong indications that vampires are evolving still further and that the moment where that change is becoming obvious is what this book is about. Not just that the vampire are changing, but that their personal choices will strongly affect the long-term outcome for vampires and humans: what sort of society and what sort of future are possible?

At first the sheer foulness of most of the vampires make them uninteresting as characters. They appear to be dark foils to show up human values. Monsters. The black heart of mankind. Now, however, colour is beginning to show through. Not all the darkness is black and not all the darkness is foul. And not all the light is clean. For humans, too, may be changing and human choices count for a lot.

This is why the small niggles earlier were just that. Once I start caring about what will happen—not just to characters, but to a whole species—then the spelling of Marseilles is moot.

Another note: The underlying plot for this book turns out to be more romance than anything else. The actions of more than one character are governed by their love interest and the interactions are quite similar to the ones I’ve seen in French revolution novels, where the brutish revolutionaries are learning finer ways and the ousted nobility learn true love and how to cook porridge.

The romance element explains the superhero feel to the abilities of several characters and the fact that they're exceptional in so many ways. It’s not that they’re super heroes. This book is like Kylie Chan’s Hong Kong series or like Meyers' Twilight—the traits of superheroicness and the tropes of speculative fiction have been woven into a reasonably standard romance plot.

I suspect this particular genre crossover is going to happen more frequently in the near future and that it’s going to take fiction into some unexpected places. There is, however, a small part of my mind waiting for traditionalists to point and say “chick lit—I can't read that.” This isn’t chick lit, though. Not even close. It’s dark and dangerous. It’s dark and dangerous and uses romance perspectives. There are no sex scenes. Using romance perspectives isn’t the same as writing paranormal romance.

Monday morning, end notes: That’s the last of the random thoughts that struck me as I read The Greyfriar. I hope you found them either illuminating or entertaining. For the record, there were no Jews and not a scrap of Australia in the world of The Greyfriar. There’s religion, but not my religion. In fact, the religion described isn’t really functional, but that may well change in the sequel. There’s an Empire strongly influenced by the British Empire, but it’s not the Empire I know. It’s not a universe I can walk in with even a scrap of belonging. It’s a great deal of fun, though. I may choose another book by its cover and do another exploration, one day.

Books mentioned in this column:
Dark Heavens Trilogy by Kylie Chan
The Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann (Pyr, 2010)
The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith (Pyr, 2010):
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown and Co., 2005) 

 

Gillian Polack is based in Canberra, Australia. She is mainly a writer, editor and educator. Her most recent print publications are a novel (Life through Cellophane, Eneit Press, 2009), an anthology (Masques, CSfG Publishing, 2009, co-edited with Scott Hopkins), two short stories and a slew of articles. Her newest anthology is Baggage, published by Eneit Press (2010).One of her short stories won a Victorian Ministry of the Arts award a long time ago, and three have (more recently) been listed as recommended reading in international lists of world's best fantasy and science fiction short stories. She received a Macquarie Bank Fellowship and a Blue Mountains Fellowship to work on novels at Varuna, an Australian writers' residence in the Blue Mountains. Gillian has a doctorate in Medieval history from the University of Sydney. She researches food history and also the Middle Ages, pulls the writing of others to pieces, is fascinated by almost everything, cooks and etc. Currently she explains 'etc' as including Arthuriana, emotional cruelty to ants, and learning how not to be ill. She is the proud owner of some very pretty fans, a disarticulated skull named Perceval, and 6,000 books. Contact Gillian.

 


 

 
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