Review: From Afar by Ava March
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 12, 2010
Regency Vampires is a very thriving genre, and usually the stories are quite gothic and dark, and not only since, obviously, they are set at night. Reading the blurb of From Afar I was expecting nothing different, the story of the vampire Raphael and his unrequited love for nobleman Aleric; Raphael is forced to turn Aleric when the man is mortally wounded by some thieves and now he fears the man will hate him.But since the beginning, the story reveals to be quite different from expected. First, it begins with a very sexy scene, Raphael perched on a tree spying Aleric with a female prostitute... well, yes, it's a sexy scene, especially when Raphael starts to masturbate, but indeed I was also worried for Raphael's safety, wondering if he was risking to fall down the tree. I don't know but this scene revealed a lot of Raphael, of how, despite being a 36 years old vampire, he is really still the young 21 years old boy he was when turned. Raphael is not a strong and mourning vampire; he is instead a young man who is searching for love. 3 years before he fell in love for Aleric, but like a very "ordinary" unrequited love, he has never had the courage to reach for it; truth be told, I felt like what restrains Raphael is more the moral sin, they are both men, than the vampire thing: even if Raphael was human, I think that he the same would not acknowledge his existence to Aleric.When he is forced to turn Aleric to save his life, at first Raphael feels guilty; he did nothing to mortally wound Aleric, but indeed it was a good chance for him. But then to Aleric takes very few time to accommodate to his new status, maybe helped in that from the fact that he was totally destitute, without any real chance, and if not for Raphael's independent wealth, he would have no idea how to pay his debts. It's not clearly stated, but this is a winning turn of the evens for Aleric from all perspectives: Aleric has always had forbidden desires for men, but he has never had the courage to really indulge in them... now he has an handsome young man all for himself; Aleric has no money and no way to gain them, and instead Raphael has plenty; Raphael feels guilty for turning Aleric and so he is willing to grant any whim of the man.There are odd but very nice contrapositions in the story: Aleric is the nobleman, but it's Raphael who has the money; Aleric is the less experience in man love of the two, but he is the one who is more sexually driven to explore; Raphael, turned at 21 years old and with 36 years of experience as vampire, is the oldest between them, but it's Gabriel who seems to be the "leader" in the relationship (even if, as I said just before, it's Raphael who has the money). All of them (and maybe some other I forgot), make the characters multilayered and original, and so, even if this is only a novella that spans for only 2 nights in the life of the men, it has a wider breath.