Record of a Fallen Vampire 3
Posted: April 5, 2009 Filed under: Record of a Fallen Vampire 5 Comments »This is… this is a weird series. I don’t know what else to tell you. I jumped in at volume three, and it took me awhile to sort things out so I could figure out what was going on. Actually, it was probably 2/3 of the book or so, after a rather lengthy explanation that sort of turned the plot on its head. From what I could tell, anyway, maybe you could see it coming.
I liked what I saw, though, especially after the big reveal from Bridget. Apparently there are… at least three sides to some sort of conflict. There are vampires, and there are dhampires, the latter are half-human vampires. There is a man in a mask that doesn’t appear to be on either side. And there is a character called Black Swan that seems to be some sort of impartial observer. Nothing particularly vampiric goes on in this volume. Apparently the King of the Vampires is looking for his wife, an insanely powerful magician that went berserk and was sealed away, then camouflaged by a thousand fake sealed places. This is the basic plot.
The beginning of the volume wasn’t particularly interesting, and honestly, I can’t imagine what went on in the first two volumes that would be worth reading. My other problem was that it took me a long time to figure out that Strauss was actually the Vampire King, because he looks like a little boy and not a terrifying magic master. After Bridget talks about what happened in the past between the Vampire King and the Vampire Queen, and a possible motive for what the king does, things got more interesting, and people sort of changed their opinions, took sides, et cetera. Even better than Bridget’s explanation is a note from the author in the back talking about a mystery author that used points of view to mislead the reader, so that leaves these past events open to another interpretation. It’s definitely an interesting technique.
There is a rather angry character that eventually picks a fight with the Vampire King. This fight is okay, and it goes on past the end of the volume, but I’m interested in the implications of the outcome and what the angry guy will have left once the fight is over.
The thing that really, REALLY endeared me to the volume happened in the last ten pages. There is a guy in a mask named Gozen. He goes through a rather lengthy analogy about what he wants from the Vampires and the Dhampires using toys to illustrate a situation where hostile tenants are trying to force their way into an apartment complex. The actual situation was completely out of left field and has no business in a vampire manga. I love it even more because of this, and it’s these last ten pages that make me eager to read the next two volumes I have for review.
This is a review copy provided by Viz.
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Gah, you picked up on RoaFV on volume *three*? I have trouble picturing how far off our preceptions are, soooo much stuff happens in the first two!
The first one alone covers around 50 years of time and tells you a lot about several characters, why Renka (the angry guy) is so incredibly pissed at Strauss even compared to the other Dhampires, the curse of the Black Swan… the second is how they managed to get into this weird meeting without killing each other in the first place.
Massive revelations are par for the course with every volume of the series and I would not recommend reading it out of order. Vol 3 is the slowest in the series and I strongly recommend going back and snagging the first two before going on. The fights are really good too- the series the writer did before this one was spiral, a mystery series where the characters are constantly trying to outthink each other, and it shows in how he writes this one.
In terms of raw stuff happening, RoaFV has a lot more than most series.
Oh, thanks a bunch for explaining the earlier volumes! I liked what I read here a lot, but it was as you say, there were so many revelations that I just couldn’t imagine the first two volumes being as significant as this one. What you said about them covering 50 years of history was probably enough to convince me that this series is quite tightly plotted and is probably worth a proper read-through from the beginning. I’ll do as you suggest and start with the first two volumes before continuing.
I knew the author also had something to do with Spiral, which I had heard was good but sounded kind of generic when I was reading through the plot summaries. To be fair, that’s probably true of this one too, but I was pretty impressed with how much stuff was going on in this volume and how weird and unique a lot of it was.
I think Fallen Vampire’s benefited a lot from the experience the author had with Spiral- I like Spiral too, but it’s more of a “watch as I put the characters into increasingly complex mental puzzles against each other”, while Vampire’s more “and now I’ll apply those thinking skills, save to tightly weave a dramatic plot”. Both are pretty smart, Vampire’s deeper, and one of the plot-denser series I know, especially in the early volumes. The players in the game refuse to stay still.
Neat. I’ll probably wait a bit to pick up Spiral to see how much I like this one once I’m caught up, but I’m very excited about getting to the beginning of the series now.