Noumenal Net

I liked Patrick Califia’s work back when he was a she, and she was a lesbian. Back in those days, Pat/rick did not limit hirself exclusively to lesbian erotica, but the stories seemed to be rawer, and packed more of a punch. Or perhaps its just that Pat/rick’s writing is better suited to the vehicle of short story, rather than the novel. Mortal Companion is the only full-length novel of Califia’s that I’ve read, and would have to read more in order to compare. But after the hell of reading Mortal Companion, I am disinclined to pursue more of Califia’s full-length fiction.        

Mortal Companion is the story of Ulric, a centuries-old vampire who falls for Mary Beth, a mild-mannered librarian (a mild-mannered librarian? imagine that!) from a small town. He pursues her, and with all his vampirely wiles, manages to transform her from dowdy and repressed maiden to a voluptuous sex-slave. Meanwhile his sister Adulfa, also a vampire, is plotting revenge against Ulric for having raped her many centuries before. Talk about carrying a grudge - you’d think after so many hundreds of years she’d have found better things to do.        

And thats pretty much it for the plot, flimsy and substanceless as it is. The gaps are filled in with lots and lots of sex. And pain. And painful sex. Oh and cats - I actually liked the cats. Patrick, if he hasn’t already done so, needs to write a story with cats as the main characters; he seems to have a real empathy for the creatures and portrays them beautifully, sympathetically, and manages to endow them with more strength, dignity and personality than he did any of his human (or vampire) characters in this book.        

The book fails as erotica, and it fails as a vampire story, perhaps because it can’t decide which it wants to be. Vampire tales are often erotic, but the erotic elements tend to - at least in a good vampire novel - enhance the story, not overwhelm it. And of course erotica, especially S/M erotica, might include a vampiric element. But with Mortal Companion I felt as if I were being bounced back and forth between porn and vamps, often without benefit of a fluid transition between the two.        

Every single main character lacked depth and development. Mary Beth/Lilith was more like some idealized stereotype of a woman. This is excusable, since as a sex-slave she is pretty much a mirror to her master’s desires. But slaves can still be complex and interesting, yet it was difficult to understand why Ulric would even be attracted to this woman. I wouldn’t be. But then, Ulric wasn’t the most complex cookie in the jar either. He and his sister Adulfa read more as parodies to me. A couple of the minor human characters managed to read like real people, but just barely, and they always lost credibility when they succumbed to the irrisistible powers of the vampires, who seemed so powerful it was a wonder they handn’t taken over the world by now.        

And let me get this out of the way. If you are writing a vampire novel and you really really want to rob your vampire characters of all gravitas, then dress them like the Village-People. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but abhorent fashion was so rampant in Mortal Companion it prevented me from in any way taking this book seriously. Any vamp that goes stalking his victims in leather trousers and fringe, or in spandex-lycra cycler’s suits, deserves to be dragged into the sunlight and left for the flames. And before you say that maybe, just maybe, Patrick was trying to avoid the lace-clad vampire cliches, nah. Ulric and his lady love often paraded around in Victoriana as well as the pirate gear (for him) and the impossible shoes (for her).        

 And why, why, why do gay S/M afficianados have to be decked out in those leather chaps and vests and caps with the chains and the handle-bar mustaches and the bare hairy chests? Is this stuff really a turn on to anyone but the narrowest, most jaded element of gay society? Hey, I like gay porn as much as the next… uh… weird chick who likes gay porn, but that uber-macho beefy Village-People stuff is one step shy of comical to me. Maybe Patrick was trying to write something for everybody, but he missed me by a mile with this one.        

My final complaint is Patrick’s idealization of pagan times. I’m sorry Patrick, but 14th C. Germany wasn’t fun for anyone. Pagan or Christian, they were all living in their own filth.And historical paganism bears little resemblance to its watered-down, fluffy, modern counterpart, and was in many cultures quite capable of many atrocities of its own. So lets quit holding up the ancient pagan cultures as an example of the morals and standards that present-day folk should embrace.        

I know that there are some people out there who like this book. I don’t know who you are, so I can’t exactly pick out a sub-strata of book-lovers who I can recommend this to. But some people obviously did enjoy this book. If you think you might, then by all means read it, but don’t base your choice on Pat/rick’s former writings, nor on your love of other vampire erotica. Anne Rice and Laurel K Hamilton this ain’t, and that should be a good thing. Unfortunately it isn’t.