VtM - WhiteWolf: Genealogy

VtM - Review: Vampire Diary: The Embrace
Masquerade/World of Darkness-related gaming material(or getting them to watch the TV movie). The
gaming references practically jump out and slap you in the face, especially the explanation Claudius (the
club owning vampire who bites Auston) gives as to what vampires are (there's these 13 clans, see, and
they all follow these seven laws, the first of which is the Masquerade, which also happens to be the subtitle
of the game, which is available now at fine hobby shops near you). After that particular section, I
kept expecting Auston to talk about the deck of Jyhad cards Claudius pulled out to demonstrate just how
powerful the Ventrue clan really is.
Third, the diary has a schizophrenic feel to it; it just doesn't read like it was written by one person (which
it wasn't). Some parts of it are well written, while others are overwritten to the extreme. Who actually
wrote what is anybody's guess (only the authors know for sure). I will say this, though: I"m familiar with
both authors' other work; one, I enjoy, the other I find to be derivative, turgid, and not very fun to read at
all. Guess whose writing Vampire Diary: The Embrace most resembles?
In Vampire Diary: The Embrace, Auston is supposed to be a person with a limited education; this is
shown by the misspellings and gramatical errors which are (purposefully) scattered throughout the diary.
Why then, I ask, do his English and vocabulary skills come and go? Sometimes Auston has difficulty
forming grammatically correct sentences, while at others he writes lines like "I am a virgin vanquished,
my blood proof of my purity" and "Memory plays such cruel tricks, such twisted timing" and "The
invisible bonds of will and volition dissolved like smoke." Sorry, it just didn't work for me. Also, much
of what Auston writes doesn't read like what you'd expect to find in a diary. It is just too refined, not
spontaneous enough. The same holds true for the artwork on the samples of the finished pages the promo
copy contains; most looks like they were carefully planned and laid out, not like something
scrawled/sketched by a semi-talented, out of practice artist on the spur of the moment.
I've quibbled so much already, what's one more. In the press release which came with this promo copy
(which I'm sure they probably wish they'd never sent me now), Vampire Diary: The Embrace is called
"One of the most unique books ever to hit the dark fantasy genre." How so? Where's the originality in
swiping the format of the Griffin & Sabine books? True, those books aren't dark fantasy; they aren't about
vampires. But it doesn't matter. Taking something that's successful, stealing its basic premise, then
having the balles to call yourself unique just doesn't cut it. A knockoff is a knockoff no matter how well
you try to disguise it with hype.
For the life of me, I can't see who White Wolf hopes to market this book to. Its thinness (we're talking
novellahere, if it is even), coupled with the price, will turn off most horror fans. It's too esoteric a subject
matter to appeal to the general book-buying public, and since there's no supplementary gaming material
included with it (or new Jyhad cards), it'll probably be passed up by gamers. That leaves hard-core
vampire fans, and that's not what I'd call a healthy sales base. Then again, I could be totally wrong about
this, that Vampire Diary: The Embrace will sell incredibly well. My tastes aren't always in tune with
mass-market America; I still don't see the appeal of angel books, yet they sell like crazy. however, I do
feel that I can safely say that the people who are most likely to dislike Vampire Diary: The Embrace are
those who are reading this review; this just isn't the kind of book which will appeal to your hardcore
horror fan (which is pretty much what you have to be to read something as esoteric as AFRAID).
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