You basically go through my objections to the quality of this book point by point and then say “That’s not true.” Let’s take my biggest sticking-point, that the characters are two-dimensional, which you say is not true. One way to test character development in a story is to see if you can describe a character without using its name, physical description, occupation, or anything other than its personality. Since I just saw the new Harry Potter movie, I’ll use Harry Potter characters as an example. I’m going to describe some characters, and not just main characters, in such a way that anyone who has seen the movies should be able to guess who they are:

1) Totally loopy. Sees things that others can’t.
2) Gets scared or angry easily but ultimately dependable.
3) Long-suffering, earnest. Gets into trouble. The underdog.
4) The smart one. Can be irascible.
5) Bullying and cruel. Acts out of fear. Works to enforce status.

Works pretty well, wouldn’t you say? No need for gender or age, even. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t do that with the characters from Baltimore, except maybe for the artist, and he was an incidental sideline character. The rest of the characters are identical cardboard cut-outs that resemble haunted men – except that one has a wooden leg.

P.S. You’re welcome to leave comments on my blog, but I would prefer if you didn’t insult my intelligence when you do so. Thanks!

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The Dark

I disagree with you stating that the writing is mechanical and that the characters are two-dimensional.

I found the writing to be bleak but descriptively lush.

If you didn’t get the toy soldier metaphor, than you were skimming over this book or not paying attention to what you read.

Also, this work is more in the vein of Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Lovecraft, rather than the poor comparisons to Verne, Wells or Melville.

The characterization was more than adequate in bringing period realism and human texture to Baltimore’s friends.

It seems your primary beef with this work is gender oriented in that it didn’t employ enough cliched vampire-erotic/ romance devices, which has been beat-to-death in vampire fiction.

This work was great because it brought back the convincing darkness and visceral horror of the vampire back to the foreground, which has been missing from a lot of the genre from quite sometime.

Stick to Twilight, Anne Rice or some airbrushed Fabio-with fangs type work if you can’t handle this type of well-executed original Vampire fiction.

Baltimore was a breath of fresh air to a heavily-treaded genre.