By MARK IVANHOE (III Publishing; 1991)
You have to admire a writer who thinks big. Case in point: Mark Ivanhoe, author of VIRGINTOOTH, about vampires who can fly, shapeshift and alter the fabric of reality at will. This leads to some unforgettable passages, such as one in which the book’s heroine shrinks down to molecule size and immerses herself in a person’s bloodstream, and another in which a fellow bloodsucker conjures up a vast desert within the confines of a small room. One of the novel’s primary virtues is the way it continually tops itself in audacious conceptions, so that by the final third, when one of the vamps heads into outer space and disrupts the moon’s rotation, such actions seem neither out of place nor particularly implausible.
Structurally, VIRGINTOOTH follows the narrative conventions of most vampire fiction. It begins with a young woman awakening in a coffin, brought back to life by a vampiric being known as the master. The master inducts the woman, whom he christens Elizabeth (the Master makes a point of renaming all of his newly inducted vampires), into the joys and agonies of life as a bloodsucker. She inevitably ends up rebelling against the Master’s rule, and just as inevitably falls in love with one of her bloodsucking fellows.
Quite a few interesting twists are wreaked upon traditional vampire lore. When the vampires depicted here drink someone’s blood they also absorb the person’s thoughts, dreams and life essence. The author’s imaginative scope extends to his depiction of the vampire subculture; a group of vampires, we learn, have broken off from the Master’s rule, residing in a most colorful condominium through which Elizabeth at one point takes a positively mind roasting tour. We also learn of the feral vampires, mindless zombie-like beings of pure hunger, and a vamp that exists as a Cthulhoid entity whose sole object is wonton destruction.
The reader’s attention is kept consistently engaged throughout a narrative that fully takes into account the myriad philosophical and intellectual wrinkles of its conceptions, and in the process provides a witheringly satiric critique of early nineties America. And yes, there’s plenty of nastiness, as the moral implications—or lack thereof—of blood drinking and reality altering are faced up to in some unflinching descriptions of bloodletting and mutilation.
The news, however, isn’t all positive. The boldness of the book’s conceptions simply isn’t matched by the prose, which is notably bland and at times even crude (a factor that isn’t helped by the sloppy editing that was an unfortunate mainstay of the its publisher, the underground outfit III Publishing). That didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the book, but did leave me wishing it were a bit better.