REVIEW CHARNEL HOUSE BLUES

Carys Llewellyn : Freelance writer and book reviewer
Just when you think that everything’s been written about vampires, along comes Suzanne Ruthven’s ‘Charnel House Blues: The Vampyre’s Tale’ giving us the most autocratic, attractive, enticing, seductive, witty, literary and discerning revenant of them all. Lord Ruthven isn’t, of course, an original creation. He’s the result of that famous ghost story challenge from the Villa Diadoti but this author puts an up-to-date ‘faction’ spin on the story and introduces us to this undead (as opposed to ‘undying’) culture through the eyes the first vampire in the literary world.
We know from John Polidori’s description that his Lordship is handsome but on other matters we must allow him to speak for himself: “It’s a sorry fact, but vampires aren’t what they used to be. I should know because I’m the last remaining member of my species from the ancient world; although if I’m brutally honest, this longevity is as much the product of becoming the alter idem of that club-footed Casanova, George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron than any fortitude on my part.”
He’s discerning to the point of snobbery often referring to the Eastern European vampire as ‘the Balkan bloodsuckers’: “For the true vampire’s taste, blood should be savoured like fine wine, which means of course, that we do not go on a nightly rampage killing indiscriminately. The prey should be carefully selected and stalked with a hunter’s eye – for who knows what trash that lithesome lovely may be using to pollute her body behind closed doors. An unspoiled Group A RH Positive should only be consumed once a month and savoured, whilst a weekly intake of an inferior drug or drink laced concoction would be the equivalent of binge-drinking courtesy of Oddbins!”
Not to mention highly seductive: “I was considered to be fascinating and exotic, and since the touch of the vampire allowed for seduction without dishonour, I was able to pleasure those young ladies of noble birth in secret. The vampire’s kiss is not always deadly, and the smallest sip can be likened to savouring a glass of fine wine, without the urge to consume the whole bottle.”
With bored, literary distain we are taken on a cloak-swirling tour of vampire fact, film and fiction and given some strange insights into the way an Old World revenant views itself and the modern vampire cult that keeps it alive and flourishing.   Re-created as ‘faction’, Lord Ruthven rarely appears in vampire anthologies and has never been filmed – neither has he ever been vanquished!

Charnel House Blues: The Vampyre’s Tale by Suzanne Ruthven

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• eBook £6.99 || $9.99
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• Mar 28, 2014. 978-1-78279-415-8.
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• BUY | AMAZON US | AMAZON UK
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• Paperback £9.99 || $16.95
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• Mar 28, 2014. 978-1-78279-416-5.
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• BUY | AMAZON US | AMAZON UK
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