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 Diana
Lee's first novel takes up where Anne Rice's vampire epics leave
off: by focusing on strong, immortal women. Ryan, a charismatic
lesbian who was made a vampire in Scotland during a time of clan
warfare, passes for male and is capable of seducing women sexually
as well as drinking their blood in limited amounts and leaving
them with pleasant memories. By the late Victorian age, she is
700 years old and has lost the ability to love. Painful losses
over time will do that to a person, even the walking dead.
Ryan is not looking for
a victim or a lover when the willful daughter of a successful
factory owner rides her horse into the woods where Ryan lives
in solitude. Carissa, the young lady, is looking for escape from
the limitations of her social role, and she is fascinated by the
woman in trousers who seems to have more freedom than Carissa
has ever known.
The mutual seduction of mortal and vampire is described in passages
which show blood-drinking smoothly combined with other sexual
activities. The BDSM implications of vampire fiction are also
explored in passages that recount Ryan's sexual history in various
historical eras. In stories-within-the-story, Ryan tells her current
lover, Carissa, about her past lovers, most of whom were Carissa's
ancestors. In this way, Carissa learns about the community she
chose to join when she asked Ryan to "make" her. Here the narrator
describes a fourteenth-century seduction:
"Ryan kissed Glyn's face and down her neck until she found the
pulse point in the hollow of her throat. Her tongue licked delicately,
but she did not bite this wanton's neck. Not until the girl surrendered
would she take her. . . The girl continued to struggle, but she
did not call out. As the chase had been, this was a game, and
Ryan laughed when Glyn pressed her crotch against Ryan's knee."
When Ryan informs Glyn of
her "true nature" as a vampire, she explains: "we can feed in
different ways: we can take life, or not. We can give pain, or
pleasure." Glyn asks why Ryan gave her both. Ryan responds: "Because,
my dear, you enjoyed it so much."
Glyn asks: "Does that make me some sort of monster too?"
Ryan tells her: "It depends who you ask. If you spoke of this
night to your confessor, I suspect that he would think you beyond
redemption." Ryan's warning to her lover has a clear parallel
in the modern world.
After Ryan's dark hint about the danger of being discovered, the
reader is not surprised to learn that she has been betrayed both
by mortal and by vampire lovers. The unfinished business from
her past serves to move the plot forward toward a grand finale
in which Carissa is finally given the last piece of the puzzle
of Ryan's life. Only then can she give or withhold her informed
consent to being Ryan's eternal "bride."
The differences between "the chase" or "the hunt" as an erotic
game and the real, nonconsensual violation of human wills are
raised in discussions between Ryan and her pupil Carissa about
rape and prostitution, about social control by the Church, about
the deadly political games in a Renaissance court, and about the
Victorian social Darwinism (a belief in survival of the economically
"fittest") which results in urban slums and a high death rate
among children. Like a budding leftist/feminist reformer, Carissa
becomes indignant about the general status of women and the working
class in her time, and she becomes attracted to a nightclub singer
who has lived a hard life.
The issue of polyamory is
raised when Ryan encourages Carissa to seduce the woman of her
choice, just as Ryan intends to continue finding new "pets" (mortal
lovers). As she explains, a promise of monogamy which is actually
meant to last forever just cannot be kept, but multiple lovers
can be juggled in honest and respectful ways.
Morality, however, is shown to be subtle and complex. The two
lovers in the foreground of this novel continue to spar with each
other and themselves about what harm done to other people could
really be considered shameful if the taking of blood (not only
for survival but for pleasure) can be morally justified.
Several threads are deftly interwoven in this novel, although
the author's tendency to show the historical past in terms of
the present makes much of the description look oversimplified
and lacking in period flavor. For those who are drawn to vampire
fiction because of its promise of a guided tour through exotic
times and places, the consistency of style and world-view in this
novel might be disappointing.
The author's knowledge of
Edinburgh, Scotland, where most of the plot takes place, is shown
to advantage, and the way in which Ryan is inserted into the tragic
life of Mary, Queen of Scots, is both daring and plausible. In
a genre which, in some cases, has become stale, "A Taste for Blood"
has more depth and originality than its title suggests. This reviewer
hopes that Diana Lee's literary career has only begun.
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