Suzy McKee Charnas (1939–2023)

Third in the series set in a post eco-catastrophe world, this follows the adventures of Alldera, the woman who escaped to the grasslands at the end of book 1 and ended up the de facto leader of the other 'free fems' who had already escaped there. At the start of this book, the fems have made their way back through the desert to the Holdfast despite the objections of the Riding Women, who we met in book 2. Sheel, one of the sharemothers of Alldera's daughter, Sorrel, and for years an show more antagonist, follows with a small group of other Riding Women and becomes a reluctant witness to, and occasional participant in, the often bloody dealings of the fems as they confront their former masters in what is left of Holdfast society, following the civil war at the end of book 1. The fems' mission is two-fold: rescue any surviving female slaves, and make the men pay for their terrible cruelty.

This is a complex book dealing with well-realised characters who are all flawed, and the complexities and conflicting priorities of the various groups of women. At first, Alldera has difficulty in keeping them from killing all the men in revenge, and has to show that she is not 'squeamish' about doing it herself on occasion. The fems are almost drunk with joy at finding and freeing other women; a joy quick to turn to a killing frenzy, especially when friends are horribly murdered by stray men. The challenge is not only to keep the remaining men alive in such a climate, so that younger women can use them for breeding, it is also to balance the conflicting desires of the different groups of women, the older ones who have returned with her from the grasslands, done the bulk of the fighting, and hate the men, and the more conciliatory attitudes, sometimes bordering on collaboration, of the recently freed fems who, being a much rarer commodity after the men's excesses during the civil war, have in most cases been treated a lot better than the slaves who escaped.

Compounding Alldera's problem in managing all this is her own personal conflict when she finds her old master alive, and the increasing attack she comes under from her refusal to have him sacrificed as part of the Moonwoman religion. This is a practice led by one of the free fems which is increasingly followed among them but which she views as superstition. Despite her legendary status even among the rescued fems, her sense of connection with her ex-master - who freed her at the end of book 1 after she convinced him to at least some extent of her humanity - leads to a underlying tension which Alldera, always a blunt, straightforward person, fails to appreciate, with dangerous consequences.

Meanwhile, Sheel and the other Riding Women have their own difficulties, with some taking to the drugged drink some of the fems brew, and others becoming curious about what sex with men entails (the Riding Women's ability to self clone is explained in the previous volume). Sheel suffers from home sickness though she and Alldera eventually reach an understanding and acceptance never granted them before.

This is a vividly realised account of the tensions and often wilful misunderstandings of a bunch of often mismatched people, with a clear style of prose that does not get in the way of the story while managing to convey the settings and mood of their surroundings, and the emotions of the characters. The viewpoint of the mad enuch Setteo is a case in point; to the women, he is a figure of fun, a mascot or an irritation while to himself he is a type of seer or visionary who is interceding between various supernatural creatures - the different groups of women (the fems are the Blessed; the Riding Women are Angels) - and the savage Bears which no one but he is aware of, and which he tries to placate or trick. The best book of the series so far and therefore deserving 5 stars, though with a caution that it does feature quite a lot of violence. show less

STUPIDLY literary for a horror pulp novel with so many covers to its name. This story deserves its flowers and I understand why there have been so many academic articles on this thing. If you're looking for a vampire book that will make you think, this one's for you 🧛‍♂️ ! One of the only feminist takes on the genre I can think of for the time period.

In this age of the twinkling, bubble-gum card vampire, Suzy McKee Charnas’ [The Vampire Tapestry] surpasses Stoker, the master and father of all vampire lore, delivering an ever-hungry animal, but one conflicted in a singularly human way.

Dr. Edward Lewis Weyland is a vampire who sees the humans around him as little more than cattle on which to feed and sustain his solitary existence. A notable anthropologist, Weyland conducts a study of sleep patterns and dreams at the Cayslin College show more Center for the Study of Man, nightly feeding on the life-blood of the student test subjects. When he targets the recently widowed Katje de Groot, he finds that her demure façade conceals the heart of a huntress. Having recognized Weyland’s predatory nature, Katje is prepared when the animal tries to run her to ground and she coolly shoots him. Weyland flees the campus only to be captured and imprisoned in a New York City apartment, held against his will as a carnival side-show type attraction. Mark, the adolescent nephew of his captor, sees more than just an animal in a cage and frees the vampire before he can be killed in a cult-like ritual. Free and physically healed, Weyland is reluctant to give up the anthropologist professor identity that allows him easy feeding opportunities and a measure of notoriety. To rehabilitate his name and reputation, the creature submits to psycho-therapy, claiming to be under the delusion of being a vampire. During weekly sessions with Dr. Floria Landeur, as Weyland honestly describes his life as a vampire, hoping to lend an air of credibility to the idea of his delusion, the therapist intuits the truth. Weyland coerces a letter of good mental health from the doctor and reestablishes himself at a southwestern college. But Weyland cannot regain his unfeeling predation, finding himself more and more affected with the emotions and experiences of those he counted as mere cattle.

Charnas tells over half of the creature’s story through the eyes of three of his potential victims Each sees something different in Weyland, and, in turn, finds something in themselves. Katje, the meek widowed professor’s wife, recognizes the spirit of a kindred predator in Weyland. Shooting him quickens in Katje a fierce zest for life learned from a childhood spent hunting big game in the African bush. Mark, the child of a bitter and broken home, identifies with the captive Weyland, seeing his own manipulated and trapped existence in the vampire’s predicament. In freeing the animal, Mark frees himself from blind obedience to the undeserving adults in his life. Floria, a therapist who has largely lost her way, finds in Weyland a similarly bruised and dull psyche. In awakening the vampire’s buried humanity, the therapist awakens her own, breaking through to a world of emotion and feeling she’d long thought lost. Weyland, the consummate Machiavellian, expertly plays the roles each of these humans expect of him, gaining exactly what he needs to survive. Though when the narrative resumes from the vampire’s perspective, it becomes clear that Weyland has been feeding on more than just his victim’s blood.

Charnas constructs the most unique and well-reasoned physiology and psychology for the vampire since Stoker first put his mark on the legend. In shaping the creature, Charnas used none of the Candyland-type fantasy, so popular of late, that has made everyone want either to be a vampire or to date one. She also shied away from the zombie-type mentality that completely de-humanizes the vampire from the start, often to the point of losing the point of the legend. With Weyland, Charnas has returned to the theme of isolation and lost humanity so prevalent in any good creature story, and that makes Shelley’s [Frankenstein] so poignant. In this case, Weyland has so embraced his unique place in the world that he isolates himself as superior to the human cattle on which he preys, looking down his nose at any experience he equates with humanity. What the creature in [Frankenstein] longs for, Weyland has buried, choosing to ignore his humanity as too painful to carry from century to century and too dangerous for a true predator to indulge.

I had high hopes for this novel, as it is from a local author, and I wasn’t disappointed. This makes my short list of All-Time Favorites.

5 bones!!!!! show less

He is primarily a creature-that-hunts, human in form and endowed with reason, but devoid of human values, probably because he lacks human emotions. He is centuries old, travelling between eras thanks to a sleep that overtakes him. In contrast to most vampires in popular lore, his need for humans is desexualised, and he doesn't bond in any way with anyone, or even get attached to places or things. One uncharacteristically probing relationship, with a psychoanalyst, is quickly aborted. Weyland show more eats to live and lives to eat and that is all. What is curious for such a concept is that he's endowed with exceptional intelligence and he even gains education and professional expertise.

The writing is competent and the idea of the character interesting, but ultimately our interest gets exhausted, because Weyland is so starkly limited. He mimics human behaviour in order to survive in human society, but he doesn't have any real interest in it, not even in his work. (In one story, he operates a sleep lab, but only so because it gives him easy access to people to feed on.) And here I must wonder, ludicrous as that is, about the plausibility of his mentality. Is it possible to be highly intelligent and yet completely uninterested in the objects that intelligence surveys? Isn't there a contradiction almost in terms? Without interest, how does one focus the intelligence?

I think Charnas wanted to experiment with ablating sex from the vampire mythos, and ditching the emotional "module" of behaviour is an obvious way of doing that. The problem is that emotions aren't merely a prod to bonding and mating. Emotions are absolutely necessary for understanding the environment and orientating ourselves in it, for learning, for knowing the world. Autistic humans have problems processing emotions, but they have them. Animals, as close to pure predators as possible, have emotions. Turtles and birds show individual preferences for individuals, special bonds. It is very difficult to imagine a mimic of humans without this component, who could survive in a human environment. And without any long-term plan or project, without any chosen meaning for his existence, such a creature simply isn't interesting for long. show less