So right before WriteOn Joliet's meeting began on Thursday night, I received this "telegram" from Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, who is now a full-fledged, dues-paying member of the group.
Two weeks ago, I read an excerpt from Ruthless to everyone present. I'd placed it in the group's drive about a month or so ago. When the time came to raed it, Ed had joined and happened to make that meeting.
I'm not certain what prompted such a generous review. I guess Ed felt one good turn deserved another.
And I guess I have TWO super fans, now.
Dear MOMI,
My first COVID-19 shot didn't go well, or went perfectly depending on perspective. I'm sick, which means the vaccine is working expect I feel like dying. I need to sleep this off.
What I was
going to read today is my review of your series, “Before the Blood.” Here is
that review. Try not to roll your eyes.
Book review on “Before the Blood,” written by Denise M.
Baran-Unland as reviewed by the Ruthless Ed Calkins.
This series, like the BryonySeries, is all about the
author’s greatest and most ruthlessly beloved character, Ed Calkins, the
vampire writing this review. At least that’s what I was all ready to say.
I
will admit it might be a tad bit improper to start a book review before reading
the work I’m evaluating, but, had I not, this review would write itself. It
might be a small bit heavy handed of me to berate the author for not including
me, her favorite character, in her five-part series, which would naturally
compel me to criticize her or her work, or at very least insist that this
series, much like the BryonySeries to which this is a prequel, is actually all
about me, whether the reader and author realize it or not. I imagined claiming
that the no- once mentioned Ed Calkins was the elephant in every room, not
written about because he’s too ruthless for adequate words.
But then, I had another humbling thought. Maybe I should get over myself
and read what was written instead of imagining what it might say. Maybe a work,
crafted by a skilled writer could be found interesting without referencing or
implying my personage.
With this in mind, I read the series; all five volumes, determined to be
nonprejudicial. I read unassumingly, as if I had no idea who the author was or
that she even ever knew the most ruthless of vampires as to give a fair and
balance view of the story as the words themselves told it, to render an
impartial verdict that I could back up with direct text from the piece.
The words I read betrayed all that. “Before the Blood” really is all
about me! I’ll circle back to that point.
The work is divided unevenly between three will-be vampires, a maiden,
and another character who is as crucial as is overlooked; each intertwining in
complex ways that mirror the characters themselves. Each holds its intrigue
beyond the carefully crafted spirit of the late eighteen hundreds to one
hundred years later where the BryonySeries takes over.
The first volume is devoted to the master piano genius, John Simons. Against a backdrop of scandal and corruption of a fraternal industrialist aristocrat, he is raised, as if he belongs, with all of its privileges, expectations, pressures applied to him. He father is cold and distant, his assumed mother is warm, loving, and increasingly unbalanced. Among the swirls of parties, monetary clout, and improper liaisons between aristocrats and chamber maids, John grows to be tall, dark, and handsome with the dark being more his mood and motives. He plows through his father’s expectations to be his protégé, but his real aspiration is music. As a proficient piano player and composer, he impresses the top minstrel of his day, gaining him the expectation for musical greatness but starts a rift with his powerful father. First his heart is crushed by a temptress, then he is disowned by his father and banished to play in a seedy music hall where is talents go unappreciated. Hungry, overworked, and despairing, John meets the next character, Kellen Wechsler, who is at this point already a vampire. John’s book, the shortest one in the series, ends with a deal in blood, but his story carries through the other volumes as it touches all characters.
Kellen Wechsler’s story starts centuries earlier. He, too, is conceived out of wedlock by a war hero that Kellen would never meet. Born into peasantry, he is the poorest of the characters throughout is life and doesn’t know wealth until hundreds of years later. When he “turns,” it’s under quite gruesome circumstance, but he appreciates the difference of a life of hunger against an undead life of constant feeding opportunity. For hundreds of years, he is content to just feed until a would-be victim suggests that wealth and power might suit him. Kellen gets his own story confused in the way that is reminiscent of another vampire character and seeks out a psychiatrist to help him sort it all out. It’s his psychiatrist that introduces him to the idea of feeding on John Simons on a regular non-fatal perpetual tryst. But Kellen takes his eyes off the prize for a moment, just long enough for John Simons to find his own prize.
In
the next volume, you meet that prize. Bryony Marseilles (her maiden name), and
Bryony Simons, claims two volumes with their respective names, but this uneven
coverage is mitigated as she shares the bulk of the text about the crucial but
overlooked character I mentioned earlier. One could say that Bryony is drowned
by this character’s charm and ruthlessness in much the way that she drowns many
of those she loves. Bryony is as fatally loving and beautiful as the lake she
names as herself. Like that lake, she never leaves the character she shares the
story with. Again, I’ll revisit this point.
Bryony’s mother dies in the second chapter. Her young
life is imprisoned, more by her view of the world, which contains only
Munsonville’ then by the deliberate confinement of her cold, distant,
over-protective, and disapproving father, who seems to believe the tragic
females in his life are divine retribution. He does relent sometimes to his
daughter’s wants and needs. Bryony’s health seems to require meat, something
the residents have disavowed, but he reluctantly allows it. Also, with extreme
resistance, he allows his daughter to go to a few parties and spend a summer
with other girls her age. But his goal seems to be to keep her innocent by a
type of captivity. He wants her never to leave, but he doesn’t express
affection toward her or any real interest in her happiness. Despite this,
Bryony has arguably the best past in the series.
The volume dedicated to Henry Matthews is between the
two about Bryony and it starts with a queer kidnapping of his wealthy maiden by
an impoverished street musician. The doubtful prisoner gives the man, Harold
Mathews, a string of daughters before giving birth to the imaginative artist
and writer, whose name bares the volume. Henry’s heath is bad, but his life of
moving ahead of unpaid landlords and living off of stolen foods is nonetheless
filled with love, not just his parents, but most of his older sisters. The
mystique of Henry’s change of lifestyle is fertile ground for speculation but his
writing talent is discovered, and he is extracted to a paradise-like dwelling,
but not before his mother and sisters died of disease.
Henry is not what I expected. In John Simons’ volume,
he is described as a dandy. His lack of interest in his fiancé might make one
believe, as I did, that his sexual identity is queer. But his story lacks the
trysts with other men that you might expect, instead focusing on halfhearted
pursing of young women, both in lovers but also the daughters of his one
surviving sister. All of this ends badly. Henry Mathews becomes a reporter, but
the reach and power of his Uncle is continuously implied, rather than stated,
in ways that will make you uneasy. Nothing of what happens next is directly
explained in favor of tossed hints, casting shadows on what might seem obvious.
Henry leaves his life for the amenity of Munsonville where he falls in love
with a woman but fails to claim her as a wife.
The last and longest volume covers the least amount of
time but cast shadows on all the other volumes. Inexplicably, as least on the
surface, Bryony’s father consents to John Simons’ marriage to his daughter. Her
new husband does not take her to his lavish home but instead builds a mansion
in the middle of her hometown and hires many of her former friends. The new
joys of marriage and wealth, however, are haunted by the shadows of a dark
husband, trying to keep his new wife as innocent as her father had once. But
Bryony is the lake, beautiful, but stormy. The mansion paradise with so many
servants and rooms also has a room that is locked to her, and one of her “servant
protectors” is a man who also loved her. Tragedy takes the village as was so
common in both the series and the 1800’s where the story takes place.
Perhaps this review is taking too long to discuss the
charming, ruthless character that haunts all five volumes.
I speak of Munsonville, the village where Bryony was
born to a preacher and his wife who, like so many of their new neighbors, hope
to never be found by their former lives. But the town isn’t built yet. Each
resident takes up an ax to fell the trees that will build their new lives with
such unselfishness that you want to forgive whatever they did to put themselves
in hiding the first place. But their lives won’t forgive themselves. Each
resident has a reason to abandon what he or she knew to come into an unknown
village of little influence or notice. Only Bryony knows no other life it seems
in a village where the bodies refuse to stay buried.
Now, I must speak about the elephant in every room in
Munsonville. This series invites many theories and discussions about what,
where, and whys that keep the volumes reread and the readers rethinking, but no
one will disagree that the real back story here is the one about Ed Calkins.
More to the point, the book is your back story too. Any of us that survived our
youth by a hurried adulthood didn’t expect to want to know or care what is in a
past until the bodies start to float up on to the lake’s surface. Munsonville
is an American story of people that left the life they knew for reasons that
may have hoped not to ever tell anyone. It’s a story that would have given the
talk show host Maury ratings through the roof.
But the author isn’t going to give the dirt up if you,
as a reader, don’t earn it. And that’s OK. If you wish to read the about love,
betrayal, and vampires as if it’s the primary reason for the text, that’s fine.
Personally, I’m not that interested in vampires, as the one I know best is kind
of a jerk. Nonetheless, there is plenty of neck biting and horror to keep the
undead aficionados reading for ages to come. Similarly, there is plenty of
accurate history of the 1880s, complete with menus and dressing for parties,
the miracle of the iron horse and the fading, but still, present wild west. But
for anyone that has ancestors at that time, your own story is there for the
picking. Be reminded of all the people who died back then, unknown with misery
and disappointment, that might draw a tear to your eye; it’s not what you might
expect from an undead horror story. A poet once told me in hard-to-read verse
that the living bones of the people who lived before us were ground down to
pave modern streets.
“Before the Blood” is a brilliant tapestry of tragedy
and triumph, grief and grievance, and let us not forget love – for even the
darkest characters love well their favorites. John has his tutor, Kellen has
John, Bryony has her beloved summer sisters, and Henry has two sets of families
that he embraces before….well, just “before.”
If you’re like me, you’ll want to read “Before the
Blood” with someone willing to discuss it or, if you prefer, argue with – as
you’ll surely miss some of the subtle clues. But in choosing a reading partner,
you might skip any vampire who might have made up his mind before reading the
piece.
Ruthlessly yours,
Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara
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