Vampire Vow (Vampire Vow Series #1) Book

This is a salutary example of a great idea being hamstrung by ineffectual execution. Schiefelbein tries gamely to be provocative: a Roman soldier falls in love with the young Jesus.

When his advances are rebuffed, he gives in to his darker impulses, and rapes and kills an innocent Jewish boy. Before Pontius Pilate can have him jailed for his unnatural crimes, Victor flees to a mysterious woman called Tiresius, who promises him the keys to the Dark Kingdom.

We then shift a couple of centuries later to find Victor in a monastery, haunted by the memory of his love for the young Joshu. He is called that instead of Jesus throughout the rest of the book because it is closer to the original Hebrew, apparently; I suspect Schiefelbein just wanted to avoid charges of blasphemy in what is ostensibly a M2M bodice (and throat) ripper.

The book then cheerfully descends into a rather lurid potboiler, interspersed with scenes of sex and violence (both equally badly written), as Victor broods (which is a rather generous term; sulks is more like it) over his lost love, and plots to make his own companion to take to the Dark Kingdom.

(Schiefelbein's particular take on vampire mythology is a tad confused: we have little sense of the exact mechanics of Victor's conversion, and it seems he has to find and convert his own equal in order to become human again, but this is unclear. Also, the novel's great leaps in time and setting are clumsily executed, with little historical significance or context).

When Michael rejects his offer of eternal life, which mirrors Joshu's rejection of two centuries ago, it unhinges Victor, with suitably tragic and Grand Guignol consequences.

Vampire Vow would have been far more effective if Schiefelbein had not written it like a soft-core porn novel. There is no humour or sense of irony, but a lot of it is unintentionally funny. When I read out certain passages aloud to my flatmate, she was quite aghast, and wanted to know why I was reading such rubbish.

The book has an interesting coda, in that it takes Victor into what is essentially Anne Rice territory (literally, as he buys an 'antebellum mansion' in New Orleans, and almost in the same breath picks up, and picks over, a male hooker). Given that there are two volumes left in the sequence, I am curious as to how Schiefelbein takes his story forward.

Well, let us just say that trash has its own place in the literary pantheon, even if it is at the bottom of the slushpile. If you are in the mood for something lurid and preposterous, Schiefelbein beckons from a darkened alleyway.