Vampire Maker
Gay vampire novel Vampire Maker by Michael Schiefelbein, the fourth vampire book featuring the character Victor. Like the previous books the story is too hung up on religion and focuses on various struggling priests rather than the vampires. While not the worst vampire book out there, the whole novel dragged to one conclusion which was not dissatisfying, but as very little happened, it could have been wrapped up sooner. For an immortal being, Victor is slow and patient. The idea behind the Vampire Maker is that Victor hasn’t moved onto the Dark Kingdom (a heaven for vampires) and his power is increasing with each new vampire he creates. While he ponders creating an army of gay vampires throughout the book, he settles on only one by the end, his latest thrall. We don’t hear of Victor’s first creation, who he abandoned in the previous novel. Most disappointing is the mild feeding scenes, though a secondary annoyance was the minimal page time for Victor in the first place.
Book summary: Victor Decimus has been a vampire for over 2,000 years. Once a Roman Legionnaire, for millennia Victor has remained a step or two ahead of rivals, would-be executioners, and the mysterious Dark Kingdom, which sets the rules for vampires’ existence. Having left New York and his lover – the vampire he made then abandoned to escape the vengeance of the Dark Kingdom -Victor sets himself up again, with his thrall, in New Orleans.
But in New Orleans, his thrall becomes the point of a new, larger conflict. On the one hand, a local priest seeks to break Victor’s hold over the thrall; on the other, the Dark Kingdom fears that Victor is going to become a Vampire Maker – one who continually creates new vampires, while refusing to take his place on the next plain of existence and thus creating an imbalance in the powers of the universe. And between both walks Victor, determined to have his own way, exerts control and remains defiant to the end.