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Katherine Ramsland sets
Piercing the Darkness up as a story about Susan Walsh, a wannabe journalist who mysteriously disappeared while researching "real" vampires. While that story line ultimately sees less light than the vampires themselves, Ramsland's rambunctious, rambling tales of nightclubbing, international travel, and meticulous wardrobe selection among the creatures of the night provide ample entertainment. The book traces her circuitous route through AOL chat rooms, Paris's underground tunnels, and any number of goth and "vampyre" clubs, pursuing leads and hunches that seem to materialize from thin air. What the story might lack in integrity, it more than makes up for in sheer strangeness.
With each new foray by Ramsland (previously noted for celebrating Anne Rice in several books) into the unknown, we are treated to fascinating insights into the personalities and motivations of people who might well be the world's most devoted fans of Rice's supernatural melodramas. Ramsland is admirably guileless throughout, throwing herself, body and soul, into situations that would run counter to most people's common sense. In one memorable scene inside an exclusive S/M club, Ramsland concludes an evening of research by treating a female masochist to a good, solid whipping. A rollicking story of blood, sex, violence, and fashion in all their various combinations. --Lisa Higgins
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From Publishers Weekly
In 1996, when Ramsland (Dean Koontz: A Writer's Biography) decided to explore vampire culture, she faced a crucial choice. Should she observe it with scientific detachment or immerse herself in its netherland? No stranger to the outre due to her research for books including Prism of the Night, her acclaimed bio of Anne Rice, Ramsland chose the latter path?a wise choice, judging by this immensely insightful and exciting report on her journey into darkness. Ramsland relates her adventures among the vampires with a novelist's flair and skill. She frames it through her quest to find out what happened to a reporter who'd disappeared while investigating Manhattan's vampire cults. She paces it, in part, through her ever-closer encounters?through e-mail, phone, then in person?with a vampire known as Wraith. She personalizes it through a steady, honest sounding of her own responses to those she encounters ("the enticing feel of the experience that could seduce me toward my own destruction?and surrender to it utterly"). As she travels through the Internet and then America?and, despite the book's subtitle, Europe too?she encounters hundreds of vampires of every intensity: those who adapt vampire dress and, sometimes, custom-made fangs (Ramsland gets fitted with her own pair); those who lap blood from willing victims; and the few who believe themselves immortal, or at least other, and who "prey" upon hapless victims. Ramsland interviews psychologists, scholars, vampirologists and other experts who cast light on her subject from a variety of perspectives. Most important, despite her fear and occasional revulsion, she evinces a remarkable empathy for those who believe the blood is the life, allowing her psychological entree into what she calls the "pulsing mystery" of the vampire, and making her book, in addition to a riveting read, a model of engaged journalism. Author tour; dramatic rights: Lori Perkins.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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