Bite Marks: a new breed of vampire just in time for Halloween

Bite Marks: A Vampire Testament
by Terence Taylor
St. Martin’s Press
Oct 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-38525-5
394 pages
Trade Paperback
Horror/Supernatural

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Christmas time, New York City in 1986 has very little to do with God. An insane vampire has carelessly begun a sequence of events that could reveal the existence of a large society of the undead to humans. He’ll stop at nothing to hide his latest debacle from the overseers of his kind, just as they’ll do whatever it takes to put an end to his troublesome ways—if he fails.

Meet Adam Caine, a relatively young vampire who has made the elaborate torture and eradication of entire family lines a form of art. His current crime? Because Caine likes to play with his food, the young woman he’s torturing manages to save her baby from certain death by turning him into a vampire. Now the creature is loose and is creating a nest of protectors and hunters. When the population of an entire neighbourhood disappears and zombies, spewing a terrifying mutation of the AIDS virus, begin roaming the streets of New York, someone’s going to notice.

What and who will stand in the way of the impending clash between humans and vampires? Not the ancient vampire, Rahman, who wants to use the newly turned baby to help him achieve true immortality. Not the brother of Caine’s latest victim, Nina. Sure, Jim Miller wants Caine dead, and he knows the abomination that was his sister’s baby must meet the same fate. But he’s so messed up, nothing else about these terrifying events matters to him. Ex-lovers Steve Johnson and Lori Martin, who are working on a book about vampires, are also pulled into the vortex of the growing storm (by the diary of the dead woman, Nina). But how can they help when they can’t even make their own lives work? The one real hope for humans and vampires alike appears to be Perenelle de Marivelle, one-time lover of Rahman and the creator/vampire mother of Caine. She brought peace and order to the vampires of New York once. Maybe she can do it again. Maybe… if her own secrets don’t destroy her first.

Bite Marks may be Terence Taylor’s first novel but his many years as a writer in the television industry shine through. He builds scenes and characters effortlessly. His writing is technically flawless. And once Taylor has your attention, he doesn’t let it go until the last page has been turned.

I give Bite Marks a solid recommendation, not just for vampire lovers, but for horror fans in general. Yet, I do have a few criticisms to offer. They come from the story itself and what Taylor was trying to accomplish with this book. In Bite Marks, Taylor gives us a fresh and scary look at vampires—he wanted to, and has, put the bite back into this kind of fiction. The novel portrays vampires as amoral demi-gods who use New York as both hunting and play ground. The history and motivations of these fiends are fleshed out in great detail as flashbacks (which also serve as breaks from the violence and gore). And here’s my first criticism: even though Bite Marks is about vampires, the central story is the unresolved break-up of Steven and Lori, and I believe Taylor should have spent more time building up these and his other human characters. You see, next to his vampires, Taylor’s humans appear as weak and ineffectual bystanders. Yes, this makes his monsters even more scary, but it’s my opinion that the choice weakens the reader’s connection to the story and will probably leave many people feeling like something was missing. Next? Taylor’s world construction was fabulous. In particular, I enjoyed his use of actual weather conditions from the winter of 1986 to finish off the metaphor of the storm. However, the way the baby vampire was dealt with at the end of the book didn’t quite fit in with the world portrayed in the rest of the story. Not only that—which brings us to my second criticism, the choice just mentioned also rendered the human participants useless.

I wanted to be impressed by Bite Marks, and, on many levels, I was. But no author should forget his readers. We want fulfilling human relationships and human heroes. In my opinion, Bite Marks just doesn’t provide enough of this.

Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye