Vampire Science

omg this one made me cry so much on the longhaul flight. Okay so I'm gonna go 4.5/5, and I'm going to talk about politics, suicide, the writing, the gay people, the doctorification, and the kittens. The suicide is both very spoilery and possibly triggering, so, read on at your own discretion. Take care of yourself, lads ladettes and ladles!

Let's start with the politics. Sam is an upper-middle class girl (who I'm 90% sure was white). She is in a very privileged position - and she wants to fight for marginalised people's rights. She fights for gay rights (let's fckn goooo vampire science!), she goes to greenpeace rallies to save the environment - she's your regular SJW. Well, a 90's version, anyway. This book challenged the way she thought about activism and allyship - how could she, with her privilege, understand the necessity of the rights she fights for? Is she really fighting, or is she just performing? A wonderful critique of performative 'activism', these challenges really fleshed out Sam as a character, and challenged my own way of thinking about this stuff as well. Sam took charge of her life: she decided that she didn't want to be performative, that the reason she was fighting was from a real place of seeking justice, and so her actions were real, too. Reading her figure out what activism is to her hit home hard - I am also in a privileged position and interested in activism, and so I heavily related to what she was talking about. As she became more confident in her motivations, so did I - I read that passage and then immediately joined an activism group.

And, if "character relatable and fleshed out enough to make real changes in a reader's life" isn't enough of an endorsement, then I am also happy (well. emotionally devestated) to report that the book made me cry. Several times. Including when I finished it on a long haul flight - pretty sure I got some weird looks from the other passengers for that one! The reason is one I will get into in a few paragraphs, as first, I have to establish the web of relationships and contrasts in this story.

We have Sam, the girl who'd left her ordinary life to travel with a mysterious man who showed her great wonders, but was finding it very difficult to cope with the danger and the trauma she was put through in said adventures, and so was considering going home, versus Caroline, the woman who had always waited, wondering if her hero would return to rescue her from her dull life and make things really matter, considering running away from her happy little family to join a mysterious man who could take her to see the kind of wonders you only dream about...

We have Dr. Shackle, the poor doctor faced with constant tragedy and no reprieve, the weight of every life he's failed to save dragging him deeper into depression. Everyone around him notices too late, and, even though they do everything right, they can't save him. This is a man in the trenches, doing real good, but who can't take another step, compared to Sam, the bright, young, enthusiastic girl who faces tragedy but keeps looking forward, keeps hoping for better, keeps deciding that if there is no better, then damnit, she will make there be better. And again, Shackle - his name is a little cratyllic, I think, with the metaphorical shackles of his duty as a doctor and his desire to do good preventing him from taking a break, from being able to think about things other than the people he's failed to save - compared to the Doctor. Doctor versus Doctor, the two men have the same duties, the same moral compass, the same damn title, and yet only of them is able to keep going: The one who is old enough to know that history repeats itself, old enough to have seen tragedy beyond the mortal's comprehension, and old enough to know that life always begins anew. He can see the possibilities, the hope for a better way, that Shackle, trapped in the trenches, bombarded by death, can't look up to see. He doesn't have the time.

It is this tragedy, if you hadn't figured it out yet, that made me cry so often. The type of depression Shackle is faced with isn't the clinical 'born with an imbalance, developed in early teens, it's a chemical thing' that you may think of when you think 'depression': this is the one we all face, if we pay attention to the news, or if we can't afford to look away from it. As a trans person, whether or not I am even allowed to exist is constantly in debate. I am the news. I can't look away. As someone who wants to do right, wants to help people, I have to pay attention so I know how to help them - I can't look away. But with this constant barrage of terror and bigotry and bad news, is it any wonder that we become weary? Every headline strips me of a little more hope, until I have nothing left to give. This is a problem facing so many of my generation, in this terrible day and age where in a supposedly 'safe' country, I watch my people flee in fear every day. I see our faces on the news reports: lists of the dead. I see war and terror. My TV screen is bloody. It's exhausting, to live like this. And that's why Shackle makes me cry: he is on the front lines, fighting to save people's lives, but it's not enough. Every life lost weighs him down, every headline, every face in the paper. His depression is our depression. But he doesn't come out the other side. He dies, and when that doesn't lift the weight from his shoulders, he's forced to ask: what next? Where can I go from here? I don't know what he picked, but I hope he chose to keep on living, in whatever form that meant. I hope we all make the choice to keep living. If I had one wish, I would ask Orman and Blum if I could continue Shackle's story, because especially in this day and age, I think his story is too important to be over.

There are a couple other relationships I'd like to explore a little, and then I'll get into the overall structure of the book, the gay, the doctorification, and the kittens.

I thought the contrast between Caroline, the wealthy doctor in the fancy lab, and Shackle, the emergency doctor in the poor part of town, was really interesting because there was a sense of camradery, but also of hostility, of you don't know what my world looks like. It felt a little like Sam's struggle with performative vs real action, how can she really make a difference - however, there was a sense of urgency vs comfort, of obsession, of being consumed by your work until you don't know anything else from the two doctors that there wasn't really with Sam's struggle, so they aren't fully comparable.

The last relationship I'd like to bring up is the Doctor and Joanna's. I really enjoyed how heavily the book explored the pain Sam felt at watching the Doctor, this man she'd devoted herself to, finally find someone he could relate to, but only in the form of the woman leading the people who'd hurt her. The Doctor held the Master in his arms and forgave him as the people he'd imprisoned looked on, hurt; the Doctor and Joanna form a very intense bond to the point where they are part of each other while Sam looks on, hurt. Joanna was immortal, and around the same age as the Doctor; how could Sam, a mere mortal, ever compare? But in the end, what mattered most wasn't just their similarity in age or experience; it was ideals. It was morality. The Doctor chose where he stood and he chose it well; he showed Sam he cared, that he tried, and that the wonders were worth the pain. The vampires were worth it for the sake of butterflies.

The entire story was a really interesting character breakdown of the Doctor, and of Sam's attachment to him/the overall process of doctorification. A must-read for any scholars in that department. That bit of "do you want me to be the man with a plan who always mean to commit murder or the guy who pulled it all out of the hat at the last second, adapting because I had to" really encapsulates the great struggle of how different writers choose to write the Doctor. Always a binary, always a division - is 13 the mentally ill alien in a powerful position manipulating and stringing Yaz along, or is she really just that happy and bouncy and enthusiastic, with the dark stuff being one-offs? Did 12 push that man, or did he fall? Was 11 a golden retriever or did he have serious anger issues? Was 10 naturally all TLV and that was held off by his companions, or was the TLV stuff something new that he ended up heading towards because of specific events and he wouldn't have done all that had everything in waters of mars not played out how it did? Also, see *waves hands* all of 7's era. This division is so key to how we understand the Doctor - the fact that we never know for sure. Is he a manipulative asshole or a good person gone momentarily astray, are his eyes green or blue, is he half-human or fully strange and alien and eldritch? We never get a consistent answer, and that's part of who he is. Really interesting stuff all around. A star to Kate Orman and Jon Blum, they sure did understand the source material!

The whole thing was so well written. Admittedly I did feel that it was a bit odd the way they waited for the last few pages to get to the climax but it all worked so I'm not complaining.

Now, the one you've all been waiting for: the gay. Why was David Shackle never more explicitly gay. Literally, these two authors showed me the most queer-coded man I've ever met and then went "yeah... he can't stop thinking about this girl he knows though". Like, this book had two main characters be explicitly bi, first scene in a gay club, and whatever the f**k was happening when the Doctor was slowly undressing for that circle of vampires, and yet they couldn't take one sentence to mention that he liked guys but was too depressed for the dating game right now. Come on. (Not really that mad, excellent representation in other ways, just complaining in that gossipy way because I can).

I know I've discussed Sam a lot, but there is something I have to mention - her assault. The VNAs have a reputation for gratuitous violence, including of a sezual nature, and I am glad to say that this has not been the case for this EDA (can't comment on the rest of the EDAs yet, I'm afraid, but I have hope). There was violence, but it was necessary, and not at all gratuitious - I am referring, of course to when Sam was assaulted on the dancefloor of the club. Orman and Blum leveraged the status of the Vampire as a predator, a representation of lust and otherness and terror, to tell a story about the effect that assault has on people's lives, and how it is so interwoven with the club scene. She was young and often seen as someone who needed 'protection', and then she was violated. The rest of the book was her taking back control after feeling like it had been stolen from her; the authors allowed her space to grieve, to fear, to feel, and most of all, to fight back. I really respect the way her trauma was explored throughout the story.

A couple last thoughts - omg the kittens. guys there's a whole scene where the Doctor keeps pulling kittens out of increasingly unlikely places. read it if just for that. Also, I haven't had space to talk about them but James and the general are such interesting characters - it's lovely to see how fleshed out they are, and how much space is given for the people left behind by the Doctor. The people who have to deal with the disasters he leaves in his wake. An easy-to-follow and terribly emotional story all around; the only reason I knocked it down half a star is because the emotions don't stop to the point where I had to take a break from reading it for a week or so because I was so overwhelmed. The fact that his story from nearly 30 years ago still has so much relevance to what we are going through today is testament to it's understanding of the issues it deals with, it's strong writing, and the writers' dedication to the story that they're telling.

There was a lot more I could have commented on but if I said everything I'd a) have to reread the whole thing again just to make sure I got everything, and b) be here forever. All I can say is: Read this book. It's really good.