Review copy provided by the publisher.
I said to a friend that I would likely read this all the way through because it’s Charnas, and I would likely not want to reread it, because it’s vampires. That turned out to be substantially correct, except that it’s just the one vampire.
Charnas apparently wrote this thinking about vampires as predators, camouflaged in part to fit in with their prey herds. Weyland remains a predator throughout, and this is never justified any more than any other being’s need to eat is justified. He undergoes therapy but is reluctant to engage with his reactions to it, to art, to anything that connects him with humanity, because forming those connections makes it harder for him to stay alive. He is not a sexy vampire–he is very nearly an ace vampire. Most of the rare occasions on which he has sex are orthogonal to sexual attraction.
Charnas does not soften this by giving us kind, gentle human foils for Weyland. For the most part his human foils are abrupt, grumpy, panicky, and only in a few instances showing their best selves. Weyland is acting according to his animal nature, but so, in many cases, are they.
The writing remains impeccable throughout. It’s Charnas. She could write a damn sentence; she could write a chapter too. It’s not her fault that I am fundamentally not interested in the vampire question. It maybe is her fault that she flirted with the edge of “okay but what about human predators in larger cultural ways” and then didn’t develop it very deeply. I see why this was worth a reprint, but it’s never going to be a favorite for me.