Tag: the red sacrament

The Red Sacrament is a vampire novel about a group of vampires and what happens when some strangers upset the balance between them and their leader. Arnault is head of a clan of vampires who perform at the Théâtre Saint-Siméon in Paris during a turbulent time in Parisian history. The vampires feed off the audience members and their concerns centre around who gets which parts, until a visit from a witch and then two newcomer vampires arriving in Paris change everything. Arnault is drawn to Victor, one of these newcomers, and dreams of the witch, but his preoccupations threaten the world he has built.

This is a book that is very much described as a “vampire novel” first and foremost, though it also has an interest in politics that feels very in-keeping with the broader gothic genre. The writing style is lush and really brings to life its nineteenth-century Paris and the contradictions held within it and within the lives of the vampire clan. The actual narrative has a slow pace, with a lot of focus on visual detail and the world of Paris. It is a book for people looking for that kind of atmosphere, a slow historical vampire novel that is playing with ideas more than plot. The characters except Arnault are not really explored in depth, because you get everything through his perspective, and I can see how for some people this might be frustrating, as a lot of the other vampires blur into one another.

This is also a novel that is in conversation with Interview with the Vampire quite clearly, as well as political and social ideas. Having read the book and seen the film, but not having watched the TV series yet, I found it interesting to see which elements I noticed as feeling explicitly in discussion with IWTV and how effective I found this. Ultimately, it does make it easy to say that if you like the theatre of vampires element of Interview with the Vampire and wished for something that explored the dynamics of that alongside the background of political upheaval, then that’s what you’re getting with The Red Sacrament.

Personally, I appreciate a lot of what Hinkley does in the book, particularly in terms of the writing style and creating a very fitting atmosphere through it. It has an otherworldly vibe, filled with dreams and shiny visions that betray rot underneath, with very real societal problems. However, I also found myself skimming through it, wanting more from its length. I think I might just be more of a twentieth- or twenty-first-century vampire person, or at least more Lost Souls than Interview with the Vampire.