Authors: Greg Stolze
Release Date: 2004-12-04
On Sale: Yes
Price: 6.99
ISBN: 1-58846-862-3
Product Type: Fiction
Product Style: Softcover
Page Count: 288
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Review by: Christopher Lee Simmons
Rating: 9/10
A highly entertaining look at the nightly politics of Vampiric Chicago.
A Hunger Like Fire is the first in a series of novels based on the Vampire: The Requiem setting. More specifically, it is set in the darkened streets of Chicago, and features the signature characters shown in the Requiem core book: Solomon Birch, Daeva and Bishop of the Lancea Sanctum, Persephone Moore, the accidental childe of Prince Maxwell, and more. It was written by Greg Stolze, a veteran White Wolf writer who has written novels like The Wreckage of Paradise, as well as working on games as varied as Aberrant and Wraith: The Great War.
I'll be honest, get my biases out in front right here. I like Vampire: The Requiem a lot. I think I even prefer it to the Masquerade. I also tend to dislike gaming fiction. I wasn't a big fan of the Clan Novels back in the day, simply because they tended to screw things up more than they got right. (Sascha Vykos isn't a she, thanks. Vykos is an it, and it wouldn't leave a scar shaped like the Tzimisce clan logo on Victoria Ash's bitchy cheek for all the blood in China.) Not to say there weren't good points: Kathleen Ryan's Clan Novel: Setite was nicely done. I'm digressing badly. It's been a long time since I actually had time to write a review, so I'll get back to the subject: I wanted to see the new World of Darkness in action, so I picked this up.
I was extremely pleasantly surprised. Stolze's writing style is deft, and he has a good handle on the characters. Persephone could so easily fall into the Victoria Ash annoyance, but she is likeable, even cool, without catering to the slobbery fanboy stereotypes, like the lesbian ninja assassins of the old World of Darkness. (Hey, I liked Lucita, but really.) Anyway... Stolze's dialogue, in particular, is very strong. He slides back and forth between the realistic, clipped and stumbling speech of characters like Bruise, and the seemingly rehearsed, stylized "prose" speech of characters like Prince Maxwell and Solomon Birch, both skilled orators.
So here's the scene:
Alcoholic Bruce Miner stumbles off the wagon, and into the Long Night. He wakes up as a Nosferatu, and promptly breaks the Masquerade. Persephone Moore is trying to find a place for herself, despite Solomon Birch's interference. Bruce (now called Bruise by his new Unbound friends) worked in a hardware store as a mortal, and Persephone was a Real Estate Lawyer. Never the twain shall meet, eh? Not so in the world of the Kindred. Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and you don't really get stranger than some of the characters in this novel.
Norris, the Prince's Spymaster, is a wonderfully written, creepy character, a la the Post-Corrective Advisor, P.R. Deltoid, from A Clockwork Orange. Solomon Birch is a nicely detailed villain who seems oddly grandfatherly around the Brigmans, his experiment in Eugenics, while at the same time being a blustery psychotic fundamentalist reminiscent somehow of Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church. Prince Maxwell is the Prince. He is worthy or respect, fear and admiration, by turns. I'd love to read a book focusing a bit more on him.
To properly rate this book, we need to accept what it isn't. It's not Literature, with a capital "L," nor is it intended to be. If you're looking for that, go get a copy of Mark Z. Danielewski's A House of Leaves. What this does, or should, aim to be, is nothing more than a highly entertaining story. And at that, it succeeds. I'm giving it a 9 out of 10.
