crowning Prince Lestat.

It's the undead high school reunion you've been waiting for. Or rather the secret vampire club hidden inside your high school you felt you belonged to, whether you first discovered Interview with the Vampire as a curious little paperback in 1976 or climactic The Queen of the Damned in 1988 or the ambitious cosmological heresy of Memnoch the Devil in 1995. Prince Lestat of 2014 is the offering you never thought would happen again after Anne Rice's re-embracing of Catholicism/Christianity after the second major death in her life. But the undead never die, lucky us.

This eternal return is complete with everything you remember: the hand-to-forehead, tragically blessed soulful vampires, effete & elegant, as Anne Rice first redefined them. Worshippers of beauty who see the world through the lens of night whose existence is sustained by life itself -- blood. By now these ideas popularized by Rice are decades old, have birthed and faded RPGs/LARPs, A/B film offerings, and countless diaspora in the horror & paranormal romance & urban fantasy genres. Ergo, you may suspect that the original characters and their behavioural conceits parody themselves by now. Yet while Lestat & Co are the same vampires, the 21st century is certainly not the same world they've spun their many memoirs about, nor does the current challenge that faces them allow for things to remain unchanged.

The creeper vine ornamented Prince Lestat UK dust jacket.

In this, the best aspect of Prince Lestat is its return to the dynamics of the mythology Rice invented, filling in early vampiric history of Akasha's Queen's Blood faction versus the twins' First Brood, and how such factions may effect how some of the ancients see each other 6,000 years later. Part of the big success of the series has to do with giving the reader a dark secret they can savour, and it could be argued that once the origins were handed out over the course of the first three books, the latter-day secrets in the rest didn't have as much gravity, but what unfolds in this latest book definitely delivers.

And if you enjoyed the narrative structure of Queen of the Damned with its assembly of the cast before the third act, then you'll cotton to Prince Lestat. The cavalcade of new names also implies the possibility that Prince Lestat's but the first of many more installments.

One can't help but notice a disconnect from 2003's Blood Canticle, where a less than isolated Lestat actually does pull himself away from his spiritual ennui long enough to help out the Mayfair clan Rice features in her other witch-centric series. Instead we're again given a Lestat still claiming he's almost damaged beyond hope, who loathes contact, and cares not for what happens to his peers. This works for the arc of the book, but proves partially incongruent for the series.

Rice points out that the literature of the vampire is a cultural vessel, that these texts provide answers & context for the undead as well as their mortal audience. In a metafictive way, Rice self-references the impact of her own books in her vampires' world & in the real one in terms of exploding the genre with her inspiration. It's a brag, but one fully backed by overwhelming success, and the establishment of an unassailable re-dressing of the vampire archetype.

As the plot inevitably brings characters together, Rice uses an interesting operating metaphor: The meeting of the vampires is like death, a reunion of souls long thought lost forever to one another. Rice implies that such an un-afterlife's akin to being with our lost loved ones (i.e. wishfully her daughter Michele & husband Stan), also complete with physical manifestations of ghosts.

More importantly Prince Lestat again advances vampires by positing a cultural evolution of the collected outsiders accepting themselves for what they are, divorcing what negative terms humanity may have contexted the vampire, and finding contentment in that realization. They begin by confronting that they're not dead, but alive, not damned, but blessed, and to still hold onto the medieval ideas that defined them only keeps them from feeling they deserve to be more than monsters. Granted, this self-forgiveness doesn't mean they're no longer vampires ... and for that sanguine truth -- that the blood is the life -- we are thankful.

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+. 

NBC's Dracula: Episode 9, Four Roses.

The three single stems Alexander brings hospitalized Mina are obvious. It’s this episode’s eponymous fourth rose that blooms when Dracula says, “If you’re going to behave like a monster, then I’m going to make you one”, as the story finally has Lucy get turned, but in an act of hatred over the original one of desire. Yet, if you’re going to shoot a bloodletting & bloodgiving scene in a picturesque milk bath chamber you’ve already spent tons making & lighting, use the contrast of liquids, and the blooming infectious cloud of blood permeating the milk in an overhead shot. Instead they chose neck gore over subtle cinematic poetry.

Also this episode continues the trumping up of Lady Jayne’s concerns about an increasing vampire incursion in London. If there’s an epidemic of ghastly proportions infesting the whole metropolis, let’s see the rolling of victims, a pub takeover, dead bobbies as the corpse of authority, or dirty street urchins strewn about like empty bags that were neither cared for by Victorian society alive nor dead ... but they certainly would when they rise undead to feed on them.

Instead we do get one scene of Dracula leading his “relatives in from the continent” to take out some of the lesser known Order of the Dragon, but despite their awesome damask waistcoats, they’re just not-so-elegant hissing monsters sporting unfortunate bulgy mouthed dental prosthesis.

[No, why bother hiring an accomplished professional fangsmith like Dnash, when one can cut corners with huge plastic caps? It’s only a really expensive & risky primetime major network show with tenuous ratings.]

And Mina’s reflection vision of herself as Ilona in the gutter scene, while a good idea, terribly bad execution. With so much sophistication plotted and built one minute, there’s hardly much time wasted in yanking the carpet out from under the same foundations. It’s surely unintended, but at times one feels that there’s a “oh, that’s good enough” ethic that erodes the result.

Plotwise, things only set themselves up for what may just be an anticlimactic end of season: Harker ensconces himself with the Order of the Dragon, continuing to prove he’s the biggest patsycake ever. And in another echo of past things, Mina throws Lucy out of a whole hospital upon Lucy’s passive confession of jerkface Harker’s tryst.

More interestingly, Mina’s modern directness gives Alexander the opening he needs, her admitting to inner knowledge she’s metaphysically connected to lost Ilona, but in a fit of vampire guilt, Dracuxander doesn’t take the opening by finally confessing his love. It’s a great moment hampered by unnecessary restraint, especially since Davenport’s threat’s been removed from the board. Also mentioned by Lady Jayne, the “Sanguine Sanctorum” has been loaned to her team of hunters from the Vatican. Whatever this item is, we’re dying to find out.

And most vengefully rogue, it seems Van Helsing may have injected Browning’s kids with his apothecary jars of Dracula’s blood before deciding to ransom them for £50K (oh, about £21M today!). If the implication of the syringes is correct, the series’ creepiness factor may multiply “‘Salem’s Lot”-style with Browing either getting eaten by his own offspring, or being put in the position of having to drive steaks through their tiny hearts! Well done, Van Helsing!

With Harker’s granting the Order the blueprints to Grayson’s transmitter, it seems hopeless that a big science ending’s going to prevail. Browning’s demands for a catastrophe may happen on both sides, and one has to suppose that a fat cliffhanger full of debris and smoke’s all we’re going to get … unless Dracula placed faux plans for Harker to steal, but that’s probably overthinking it.

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

NBC's Dracula: Episode 3, Goblin Merchant Men.

The question we're faced with at this point is if we'd never seen, or read, or heard the Dracula story, would this show's writing stand on its own? Part of me thinks main players aren't developed or deep enough, but the other part doesn't care because like most viewers, I already can fill in the blanks. Yet the fact that we’re given pause to ask the question’s telling.

And biggest plot oversight episode three presents is why would The Order of the Dragon go through so much trouble to create a being that has supernatural strength & speed, far superior senses, and lives forever if he's just going to turn against them? Same with leaving Van Helsing alive after killing his family. Not as ruthless as a secret cabal that's endured for over a millenia should be. Rather careless, really. And it makes no clear sense other than to set up origins with matching revenge motives for our two antiheros. Writers, your red hands are caught in frame, unfortunately.

Conversely from those same writers, we've been gifted more interesting reimagings: The asylum is Dr. Murray's, Mina's father, not Dr. Seward's asylum, of which there is no Dr. Seward character to speak of. And the more I consider the likewise absence of Mr. Quincey Morris in this version, the more I wonder if making Dracula the Texan Alexander Grayson is kind of a Quincey analogue. Plus if there's no separate Morris, there's no Texan shoving a Bowie knife into Dracula’s chest at the end of the tale ... which means Dracula might yet win this time!

Jonathan Rhys Meyers apparently gets recast as Shirtless Joe, which gives the episode a whole lotta mancandy. Are the unnecessary tribal stripes bookending his elbow & upper sleeve dot patterns really JRM's ink? Either way, enjoy ladies.

Quite fun are the episode’s dominant Lucy & Mina montages & shared moments that sets them up as the best of besties. If (if, since we're not sticking to a direct novel adaptation) things go bad (good?) for Lucy in this telling, it'll hit that much harder. I call BS on the bohemian flaming sugar cube absinthe serving, but liked the tunnel vision and slo-mo dance scene with the twangy modern music, and Mina’s thick flowing curls as the green fairy has its way with her.

[Two orders of cheesecake, please.]

Laurent's secret sentencing by The Order of the Dragon could've been like the startling medieval punishment of the traitors in Anne Rice's Talamasca from Taltos, but the blocking on the gladius thrust was off, which undermined the execution for the viewer. As a partial consequence of this unbelievable element, when lover Daniel shoots himself and suicide note’s Grayson's involvement in both their deaths, we just don't care. We know Daniel's the least sucky fencer, and lost his true manlove, but whatevs. For want of the convincing Roman nail, this whole crux don't matter.

Thanks to clever Team Dracula for killing the seers! Not because they were any sort of threat, but because those two Grace Jones performance school dropouts couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, even making lousy corpses despite really great smashed face prosthesis. And seeing Van Helsing lay down the hammer shows what grim stuff he's made of.

Have discovered why my objection to the show’s oh-so-faux London holds water: It’s shot in Hungary. The studio fabricated street where Dracula picks up Mina, Harker’s new digs, and Mina resides, are all the same set, as carelessly revealed by a ground level 360-degree shot in the Mina & Jonathan let’s-get-married kiss. The directors save money but blow it by not taking the time to redress the set and use different camera setups to hide that fact. But the sweet thing about Hungary as a location is that I believe the cherry blossom tree courtyard is in Castle Corvin (yes, the same of Corvinus family fame from the medieval history involving Vlad Tepes, the Inconnu’s hidden home from VtM, and the Underworld franchise) which makes using this particular location seriously legendary and vampire epicentric.

American Grayson, just like the Transylvanian Count in some film versions, is the unacceptable outsider, intriguing to Victorian society as a curiosity, but never to be given full berth. Also stymied by this, our medically-minded Mina, who would become a female doctor in an age where most women only hope to marry successfully. Grayson’s foreign conventions (pretended & real) & technological progressiveness, challenges Victorian mores, just as Mina does, which in this version makes them a match to root even more for.

While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

the undead subtract the subjectivity of math.

"Vampires a mathematical impossibility"?!?

If physics professor Costas Efthimiou thinks he's so damned clever, why isn't he working on applied fusion, as opposed to pulling this cynical nonsense to get his name in some third-rate science website's well-buried Halloween feature article? Publish or perish, indeed. (What's also odd is a dead link from his homepage to Transylvania University, and vacation pictures of the Greek islands -- an alleged hotbed of vrykolakas activity! Is he really a disinformant?)

Math relies on unproved postulates to complete its geometries, and resorts to imaginary numbers to solve its problems, while even Euclid's unreal linear thinking unravels and frays when distances inevitably curve. If some number zealot needs to go comfort himself under spreadsheets of theory so he can feel safer at night, then let him fool himself. Anyway, Efthimiou's based his formula on a zombie mechanism, not a vampiric one. Single vampire bites do not necessarily spread the blessing.

Stoker's Van Helsing, yet another self-proclaimed "Mr Know-It-All", was partly deceived the by this same misconception: "... they cannot die, but must go on multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water." (pp. 263-264, McNally & Florescu, eds.), which is likely where the mathmonkey drew his flawed timestables from. Plus, the idea of vampirism's been around for far more than 400 years, as paintings on ancient Assyrian pottery suggest. And by the time numerous official military and medical accounts of vampirism crashed upon the intellectual shores of the Ages of Reason & Enlightenment, it was none other than philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788) who had the illumination to conclude: "If ever there was in the world a warranted and proven history it is that of vampires."

Maybe Count Vladislaus Dracula in 2004's "Van Helsing" encapsulates it best: "Why can't they just leave us alone? We never kill more than our fill. And less than our share. Can they say the same?" Only stupid hunters shoot all the game, while the smart ones care to leave enough for next season, and vampires aren't required to kill their prey like humans, monthly or otherwise.

Leave the vampires to the vampirologists, and go say your faithless rosaries on the abacus you litanical mathematicians, because undeath defies not only math, but the limitations of life itself.

[From a long-ago blog, re-posted/re-contexted here in honour of the recently deceased Jerry Nelson, the voice of Sesame Street's Count Von Count. His character lived the folklore that vampires are possessed by a compulsion to count grains or thistles, a facet that could be used to stymie pursuing undead or delay their entry into homes. But for The Count it was not only a teaching technique but a joy that seemed to celebrate his infinite nighttime existence, a creature beyond the rational using the rational to sum up the world around him, and arguably the happiest of characters on the Street. Thanks for all the love of countless things in life & unlife, Mr Nelson.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.