Some nice quotable stuff here.




I liked the

Knight’s characterization of the relationship between Val and Ali, his long-time covert operations partner, remains one of the most tender yet brittle depictions of broken people finding trust in each other. Knight’s palette of emotional connections between characters is as well-developed as you could hope for, and that makes Vampire Earth worth coming back to again and again.

Partnerships are messy things, and I've tried hard to keep Val and Ali off the "sexual tension you know they're going to do it sooner or later" see-saw that has worked really well for a lot of male/female pairings in pop culture. When he tried for her, she was too independent or damaged to accept, or just didn't want to be another injection of his road pussy habit; when she wanted it, he knew it was the liquor talking or one of her bouts of melancholy. They feel very real to me, the way they'll take physical comfort in their intimacy but both know, deep down, that if they have sex it'll mess up the brothers-in-arms aspect of their partnership. Thinking back, I probably should have had them sleep together back in the time between Choice of the Cat and Tale of the Thunderbolt as Val was building his resume as a Coastal Marine and she was acting the part of his spouse, out of sheer boredom if nothing else, but such a turn would have deserved a show rather than a tell.

I don't think of myself as a military sf/fantasy writer. I just use a military structure in Vampire Earth because it makes the most sense for resisting the Kurians, plus there's nothing that can equal the military (like any large organization, only they can shoot you) for forcing you to work with people you may not necessarily like or respect. And it's a handy vehicle for bizarre changes in location of the goal posts, impossible-to-reach objectives, conflicting priorities, and of course some lively chaos and noise now and then. As Fred Saberhagen put it on a long-ago panel (I quote from memory, it's not exact) "I write battles because they're exciting -- for the author and the audience."