Reviewed by Patricia J. Esposito

459pp, 6" x 9"; ebook - approx. 200,000 words
Cover by Jade
Published by DreamCraft,
printed & bound in the UK and EU.
Paperback via Amazon.com or Lulu.com;
Ebooks from Kindle, All Romance eBooks, Lulu, Smashwords, DreamCraft;

$23.50 (Amazon paperback); $9.95 eBook for Kindle, epub, PDF, Stanza.

Some readers want vampires as monsters, powerful and frightening; some want sensual vampires whose kiss is ecstasy; some like the immortality, immunity, or safety of vampires. There are hundreds of vampire novels out there fulfilling these needs. Nocturne by Mel Keegan is something else.

Writing in an elegant style that's unafraid of tenderness, Keegan presents vampires and their changelings that blend into the human world--because essentially they are human. They're living in the late eighteen hundreds, the age of reason, where superstitions are no longer believed, and odd traits like sensitivity to food and daylight are attributed to a blood disease. Named photonic mydriasis, this disease has infected Michael Flynn, or so his contemporary humans believe. He's a novelty, beautiful and intriguing.

His beauty, sensitivity, and mystery captivate Vincent Bantry, an army captain recently returned from China. Bantry encounters Flynn at an evening gathering of friends, and becomes involved in a tarot card reading that warns him of danger and struggles. Despite warnings everywhere, he can't deny his attraction to Flynn, saying, "You're built like a boy but you're not a boy. You've skin like a girl but you're not a girl. You're more than both. You're a man."

The changeling Flynn, however, is also a fascinating specimen for David Lockwood, a doctor who kidnaps the changeling, torturing him to find the secret of his power and youth. And when a series of killings occur in the city, all involving blood loss, Flynn with his oddities becomes suspect.

Bantry is suspicious himself. He knows there is something odd about Flynn, beyond the explanations of his disease. yet despite what reason and suspicion tell him, he feels more deeply a sense of trust. He knows that Flynn is good, that he could never kill. When Bantry learns of Flynn's captivity and the doctor's extreme and cruel experiments, he wants to risk his own reputation and being named an accomplice to help the changeling.

Vincent Bantry, human, and Michael Flynn, vampire changeling, are two men in love. They live in a society that fears and punishes male intimacy; yet, they know that what they feel for each other is right. Fugitives. Lovers. Vampire and human. Passionate and sensitive. Man and man. This is the heart of the novel. Two characters who care about each other and whom we come to care about as if they exist in our world.

Mel Keegan is not in a rush to make you feel for his characters; they are not contrived. Though they speak their minds clearly and aren't afraid to divulge their hearts, Keegan develops them patiently, letting the reader come to care for them in a natural way, the kind of caring that means we feel any loss or pain acutely.

Neither does Keegan rush through formulaic plot. He lets the enjoyment of foods entertain us, lets the art and music of the time set the moods. And yet there's no self-indulgence in his writing. The prose is elegant and precise, intelligent and clear, and authentic to its time: "Still, he knew he would commit the letters to the hearth the moment he returned."

Sensuality is found in the world around them, and Bantry come to realize that he wants the vampire world of "opulence and art, where love was the language of the night, fluently spoken by timeless people." In his careful depictions of the time period, Keegan doesn't ignore the sensuality found in the lovers' bed. Sex scenes are vivid, first tentative and then demanding, as passion deepens between Flynn and Bantry. Bantry's desire to be changed intensifies despite Flynn's protests, and Flynn confesses, "to be in love again is to be alive."

For those who enjoy historic fiction, there is much history in the story's details, such as in images of the ship they flee on: "Nowhere on board could one escape the drum of her engines...an old hull that had been converted to steam, she still had masts up, but the sails were reefed and stokers were working hard in the heavy weather." And as ancient vampires tell their tales, flashbacks allow us journeys to other worlds and times. What comes of these flashbacks and the vampires' perspective is an understanding of what it would be like to live this long. As one of the elder vampires says, "The trouble with humans is they grow old before they grow up properly, and never even begin to comprehend their own minds."

Keegan's vampires respect life and have lost many of the frailties, vulnerabilities, and fears of being human. They love without jealousy; they give without the greed of wanting to take back. "They've outgrown human folly."

Yet their true being must remain secret. What would society do to gentle but powerful immortals? What would human greed want to take from them? What would human fear of what's different destroy in them? This is what Flynn and Bantry face as they experience true and beautiful love together on the run from all that's corrupt in humans. We root not only for the vampires but for two men trying to be in love.

What I admire about Keegan's work is his fearless portrait of men in honest love, his ability to make readers care deeply for his characters, and his graceful, classic style of prose so suited to the grace of his people.

A highly recommended, fine portrait of what vampires and humans might be.

Rating: Five stars.

See this review online at Amazon