Kindred
Review by The Mad Bibliographer, submitted on 01-Jan-1996

A version of the following review will appear in _The Vampire's Crypt_ 14 (Fall 1996).

John Gideon. _Kindred_. New York: Jove, 1996; $6.50/$8.50; ISBN 0-515-11724-2.

_Kindred_ is one of those books that makes me ask: what is a vampire novel? What makes a critter a vampire?

No two ways about it, there's something supernatural and deadly in John Gideon's latest novel. Lieutenant Lewis Kindred knows Gamaliel Cartee isn't a natural being the moment he lays eyes on him, on a man whose features and skin tone suggest mixed blood and whose eye colors--one eye blue, one brown-- reflect an inhuman mixture of who-knows-what beneath the facade of an interrogator of prisoners of war (read: professional torturer). In Vietnam Cartee brings emotional devastation to the troops and gory death to a local whorehouse. Kindred wants no part of the glowing orb Cartee tries to bestow upon him, with the ominous sentiment: "You've earned it."

Despite having lost his legs to enemy fire, Kindred puts his life together: Two decades after Vietnam, he makes a living desktop publishing from his apartment. He has two chief forms of recreation: regular poker games, and time with budding investigative reporter 17-year-old Josh Nickerson. Josh has a hot lead on a story that is growing weirder by the minute. It starts with the mysterious death of the lead singer in a local heavy metal group--a death that may be connected with the appearance of a mysterious woman at the singer's apartment. Ominously, someone has been mailing Josh clippings that tie the singer's death to a string of killings across the nation-- killings that remind Kindred of what Cartee did in Vietnam.

Naturalized American Paul Tran--attached to Kindred's unit in Vietnam, then boat person, now entrepreneur--knows the danger Kindred is in. He has done what he can to act as guardian angel through the long years, with the aid of a talisman from a Cao Dai priest and his own gut certainty that Gamaliel Cartee was nothing human--and will stop at nothing in trying to convert Lewis Kindred into the same kind of monster, a monster unbeatable at games of chance and insatiable in its search for human flesh and blood to feast upon--a creature that casts an iridescent blue shadow and can survive a nine-millimeter slug through the brain. The monster is coming closer, however, and Tran knows he cannot defeat it by himself--nor can he turn to Kindred for help.

But is it a vampire novel? These creatures have points in common with pop culture vampires: They do not reproduce sexually but by converting humans to their own kind; they neither age nor die but sometimes "go to earth" to rejuvenate themselves; they have hypnotic powers, superhuman speed and strength, hyperinflated egos and a complete lack of morality; they can survive wounds that would be mortal for a human; and in order to survive they must kill, although they eat human flesh as well as drinking blood. Most ominously, they turn their victims' sense of justice against them: Only individuals who feel righteous anger against these creatures, anger enough to try to kill them, can be transformed. Whether you call it a vampire or not, it's at least a twist on the vampire as we know it.

In contrast to Gideon's originality in treating the vampire legend, _Kindred_'s cast and plot bear a weighty load of trendy cliches. The horrors of Vietnam, including routine violations of the Geneva Convention; boat person success story; interracial couple (Anglo and Vietnamese-American) rescued from skinheads; interracial cooperation (African- American and naturalized Vietnamese-American); and the ability of the disabled and homeless to more than fend for themselves: This book is so Politically Correct it ought to run for office. (I have to admit, however, that I enjoyed seeing two men in wheelchairs beat the stuffing out of two able-bodied, armed thugs. It *is* possible to be Politically Trendy and still entertaining.)

Vampires or not, the strange beings in Gideon's book have frightening powers and chilling invulnerability. Kindred's wavering between their way and his conscience might seem silly in the hands of a lesser author, but Gideon treats amazing events with a quiet seriousness that leaves them plausible-- almost too plausible. After reading _Kindred_, you'll never feel the same about poker--or anger--again.