A Taste of Blood Wine
Review by Baron Gideon Redoak, submitted on 24-Apr-1994

By Freda Warrington, Pan, 1993

I hesitated before buying this book, Kindred, due to the very cliched cover picture of a vampire in red-lined opera cape standing in front of a Gothic window. I thought, "How tacky" and bypassed it, but decided to read it after looking at it a couple of more times.

Pay no attention to the cover! This is anything BUT a cliched vampire story! It is so very different from anything else I've read that I'm not quite sure how to describe it.

There is a vampire named Kristian who thinks he is God. He has subjugated all the other vampires to his will, and there are none who do not belong to his "court" and do his bidding, save for Karl. Karl, beautiful and rebellious, will not worship Kristian. Instead, Karl seeks out a professor of science to help him in his studies of vampiric nature so that he can find something that will ultimately destroy Kristian. The scientist's family, the Nevilles, are a rather dysfunctional unit, and one of the daughters is a shy, painfully withdrawn little mouse named Charlotte who slowly falls in love with Karl. Disaster falls when Kristian learns of Karl's involvement with this family, especially with Charlotte, and Charli's own family also unites against her and her love. The other vampires in Kristian's court, including Karl's own daughter, both help and hinder the couple, their loyalties shifting weirdly.

There is a beautiful concept called the Crystal Ring, another dimension in which only vampires may travel and then only if they have the strength because of the extreme cold. Kristian imprisons those who have displeased him in the coldest layer of the ring. He claims it is the mind of God. Traveling in and out of the Crystal Ring is what enables vampires to appear and disappear as if by magic. There are no bats, wolves or coffins in this strangely beautiful story. It is tragic and yet triumphant. A slight warning: this is a very thick book and I found it very hard going at times, but ultimately it's well worth reading.