Many authors have attempted to tackle the vampire story. Increasingly, vampire tales of old are being told in a new…light. Despite the tendency to not “fix anything that’s broken,” like the vampire formula, there are many original and refreshing spins on the monster of old. Take, for instance, Cathedral of Vampires by Mary Ann Mitchell.

While Mary Ann Mitchell doesn’t deviate too much with the traditional vampire formula in Cathedral of Vampires, she puts an interesting twist in the whole vampire mythos with the incorporation of the Marquis de Sade. Certainly, the infamous writer has made a dent on history and sexual freedoms; naturally, the perceived uninhibited sexuality of the vampire and a historical figure of considerable sexual appetite would go hand-in-hand. There is enough legend surrounding the doings and works of the Marquis de Sade to make him a comparable monster in his own day. Condemned for his graphic writings of the erotic, Mitchell uses the infamy surrounding the mysterious de Sade to her advantage in establishing a hedonistic antagonist who happens to be, after two-centuries, still hungry in every sense of the word.

Beyond this interesting point, Mitchell never allows the story to live up to its premise; it’s paced at a blinding speed and the characters often seem to be mass caricatures, or parodies, of themselves. I really wanted to care for the protagonist, but I didn’t feel invited to do so.

Published Leisure Books (Dorchester Publishing) in 2002, the book is perhaps mostly lacking is its preoccupation with self-aware gothic imagery and dialogue, which, while promising, makes the story feel awkward and cliché. There is no real horror to speak of in any of the situations, either. The Marquis de Sade, at first a promising villain of the perverse, goes very little beyond the page and into the imagination to spark any real fear. In the gothic tradition, the thrills are laid out in an almost painstaking fashion, which is disheartening to see in a book that should, by all expectations, blow the reader away.

Mitchell is a talented writer and has one several awards for her work; I don’t feel that Cathedral of Vampires is in any way representative of what this author can really do.