Bloodless

Among other things at the weekend (making a raincoat, filing various finance documents, grumbling at an incipient cold) I skimmed through Anne Rice's The Vampire Armand. I was quite a big Vampire Chronicles fan in my teens, and owe her my introduction to internet fandom and fanfic, but even at the time I knew I kept reading after Interview with the Vampire more in hope that she would return to the heights of that first book, with its style, originality and verve, than belief that she was actually likely to do so. It was not to be. From the opening pages of The Vampire Lestat the path lead, first gently and then ever more steeply and drearily downwards until, having struggled to the end of Memnoch the Devil I decided enough, no more. I subsequently someone’s spare copy of The Vampire Armand, and on Saturday, a good five years later, I finally made an effort to read it before bunging it off to the charity shop with a few other books that had failed for sufficient time to inspire me to open their covers. Alas, it was exactly as expected; nothing new, nothing alive, re-hashed, warmed through left-overs that had lost all savour, so disappointing I didn’t even regret the fact. It wasn’t that I had ‘moved on’ – I’ve moved on since I first read David Eddings, but if I’m ill I can still enjoy a gallop through the Belgariad as I wipe my fevered brow. This was simply dead, not even a pleasure for old sake’s sake. Oh well. I’ll just have to wait for George R.R. Martin to write a sequel to Fevre Dreame.

Still can’t think of a plot I like for femgenficathon. I may yet be reduced to using Alice Longbottom as a protagonist.