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Dark Ages Clan Novels #6
Dark Ages: Ravnos
Alone Before the Inquisition
The young vampire Zoe has lost everything. The city she knew has been sacked and she has fled. Her trusted sire has fallen to the torches of the Inquisition. Her faith has been eaten by the Followers of Set. Now, all she wants is revenge on her fellows and on the world as a whole. Can Anatole, the mad priest among Cainites, save her soul? Or will he just damn her all the more?
About the Author
Sarah Roark is the author of many roleplaying products and her short fiction has appeared in Veil of Night and Demon: Lucifers Shadow. Dark Ages: Ravnos is her first novel.
285 pages, Paperback
First published June 2, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 4, 2016
After 5 novels with elder vampires as main characters, "Dark Ages: Ravnos" is about fledging Ravnos Zoe and her guest for vengeance.
After her sire Gregory the Wondermaker's Final Death, killed by crusaders working for the Order of the Red Brothers (an order of Holy Inquisition vampire hunters), Zoe starts hunting the monk responsable of that, a quest for vengeance eleven years long, fighting against sunlight, mortals, cainite territoriality and her inner Beast with the only help of her supernatural control of illusions, trademark power of vampire clan Ravnos, and her adoptive sire Anatole, the mad Malkavian prophet.
The book is very slow in a lot of parts, but Sarah Roark is very good on writing and you can feel the medieval atmosphere of the setting far more than previous novels of the Vampire Dark Ages Clan Novels saga.
Anatole always was one of my most favourite Vampire The Masquerade iconic characters and the bloody unholy ending is just awesome.
Is young Zoe going to have her vengeance without dying or losing her soul? Read this novel and find it.
Higly recommended to all old fans of White Wolf Vampire the Masquerade/Dark Ages Rpg and not-sparkly vampire lovers out there in the night...
After her sire Gregory the Wondermaker's Final Death, killed by crusaders working for the Order of the Red Brothers (an order of Holy Inquisition vampire hunters), Zoe starts hunting the monk responsable of that, a quest for vengeance eleven years long, fighting against sunlight, mortals, cainite territoriality and her inner Beast with the only help of her supernatural control of illusions, trademark power of vampire clan Ravnos, and her adoptive sire Anatole, the mad Malkavian prophet.
The book is very slow in a lot of parts, but Sarah Roark is very good on writing and you can feel the medieval atmosphere of the setting far more than previous novels of the Vampire Dark Ages Clan Novels saga.
Anatole always was one of my most favourite Vampire The Masquerade iconic characters and the bloody unholy ending is just awesome.
Is young Zoe going to have her vengeance without dying or losing her soul? Read this novel and find it.
Higly recommended to all old fans of White Wolf Vampire the Masquerade/Dark Ages Rpg and not-sparkly vampire lovers out there in the night...
July 20, 2022
I don't follow the story.
I don't understand why a quest for revenge has to follow a path of multiple side quests and diversions.
I don't understand the bevy of Latin, historical and biblical references.
No, I'm not particularly drawn to the story either in some inexplicable and compelling way, either. I haven't read book 4 which gave us the introduction to Zoe and why she's driven to avenge her sire's murder, but I don't think it compromises what should be the ability to follow what the hell is going on and why.
Though it might evoke a sense of epicness by tracking Zoe's progress as she ping pongs from location to location over the years, it also makes these locations and the people she meets forgettable. There are too many to remember and keep track of. The author's use of names of Festivals and special religious dates to track time if, like me, you have no idea what day they are; you just get this vague idea that months, years pass uneventfully by. Furthermore, I don't get a sense that Zoe's much of a Cainite except by name, or even a Ravnos. There is no display of Disciplines by her, although she feels hunger and tries to suppress it. Is this meant to impress upon us how futile and immature she feels as a neonate? She just has little to no agency. Why are we following an inconsequential nobody who's up against... *general hand wave*... the grand machinations of vampires, templars and witch-hunters?
I'm just behind the halfway point of the book. Seriously, the pay off by the time it finishes better be the best thing ever, because this is turning out to be a haphazard, meandering and miserable waste of time of a read. Anatole had the right of it when he said, "The justice of the Lord may wait a long time, but it can’t wait forever." And he said this in response to Zoe complaining that they were getting nowhere. Could've sworn Zoe was complaining at the author. GET ON WITH IT!
---
Finished. I guess the ending was worth it after all, although I still resent the effort I spent reading it. The author's writing style seems scattered and I would've liked a stronger impression of the key witch-hunter characters and heretic Cainites so they could be remembered and tracked. As it was, many names washed over me and I didn't realise that they would frequently appear throughout the story.
As such, much of the storytelling feels oblique. This is not an easily accessible book, and I think a bit of knowledge of 12th century European history on top of V:DA lore would help to understand what's going on.
I don't understand why a quest for revenge has to follow a path of multiple side quests and diversions.
I don't understand the bevy of Latin, historical and biblical references.
No, I'm not particularly drawn to the story either in some inexplicable and compelling way, either. I haven't read book 4 which gave us the introduction to Zoe and why she's driven to avenge her sire's murder, but I don't think it compromises what should be the ability to follow what the hell is going on and why.
Though it might evoke a sense of epicness by tracking Zoe's progress as she ping pongs from location to location over the years, it also makes these locations and the people she meets forgettable. There are too many to remember and keep track of. The author's use of names of Festivals and special religious dates to track time if, like me, you have no idea what day they are; you just get this vague idea that months, years pass uneventfully by. Furthermore, I don't get a sense that Zoe's much of a Cainite except by name, or even a Ravnos. There is no display of Disciplines by her, although she feels hunger and tries to suppress it. Is this meant to impress upon us how futile and immature she feels as a neonate? She just has little to no agency. Why are we following an inconsequential nobody who's up against... *general hand wave*... the grand machinations of vampires, templars and witch-hunters?
I'm just behind the halfway point of the book. Seriously, the pay off by the time it finishes better be the best thing ever, because this is turning out to be a haphazard, meandering and miserable waste of time of a read. Anatole had the right of it when he said, "The justice of the Lord may wait a long time, but it can’t wait forever." And he said this in response to Zoe complaining that they were getting nowhere. Could've sworn Zoe was complaining at the author. GET ON WITH IT!
---
Finished. I guess the ending was worth it after all, although I still resent the effort I spent reading it. The author's writing style seems scattered and I would've liked a stronger impression of the key witch-hunter characters and heretic Cainites so they could be remembered and tracked. As it was, many names washed over me and I didn't realise that they would frequently appear throughout the story.
As such, much of the storytelling feels oblique. This is not an easily accessible book, and I think a bit of knowledge of 12th century European history on top of V:DA lore would help to understand what's going on.
December 14, 2025
This book follows Zoe, the young Cainite introduced in "Setite", on her quest to avenge the death of her sire Gregory Lakeritos at the hands of Isidro, a proto-vampire hunter monk. At first, it is a focus and tight narrative that shows how difficult unlife is for a lonely young vampire that hasn't even been taught the tenets of her existence, but then Zoe meets Anatole the Malkavian monk from "Lasombra" and the book falls apart. For one, the Anatole we meet in "Ravnos" is a completely different character from the one in "Lasombra": he is funny, talkative, helpful, religious, patient, and manipulative. Secondly, his arrival takes focus away from Zoe because he is made to be a much more interesting character than the clueless and inexperienced Zoe.
Furthermore, by midpoint, the initially tight focus of the novel is lost because, once again, the book introduces more characters than it can reasonably follow or expect the reader to be able to track, and so we have the point of view jumping between Zoe and Anatole and multiple vampires in the refugee camp outside Paris, the vampire hunting monks and the nuns with the gift of prophecy that support them, members of the Cainite heresy in the camp and in Paris, members of the Paris prince's court. There are even characters that are introduced only for a scene or two and then discarded and forgotten. There are so many guns introduced in the first half of the book that are never fired that Chekhov should reasonably expect a 3 AM raid by the ATF.
Character development for Zoe is all over the place, and her becoming Anatole's adoptive childe is both helpful and detrimental to her because she starts to act in contradictory ways. At one point, it starts to feel like the author actually didn't like the protagonist. Anatole, too, undergoes a change at some point that is so sudden and inexplicable that he begins to feel like a different character altogether.
Finally, I am starting to feel like all of the novels in the series are being mistitled because they actually barely do anything to introduce the readers to the vampire clans the individual books' protagonists come from. Why title the book "Ravnos" when there are maybe four pages throughout it in total dedicated to discussing the clan and actually telling the reader something about it?
Furthermore, by midpoint, the initially tight focus of the novel is lost because, once again, the book introduces more characters than it can reasonably follow or expect the reader to be able to track, and so we have the point of view jumping between Zoe and Anatole and multiple vampires in the refugee camp outside Paris, the vampire hunting monks and the nuns with the gift of prophecy that support them, members of the Cainite heresy in the camp and in Paris, members of the Paris prince's court. There are even characters that are introduced only for a scene or two and then discarded and forgotten. There are so many guns introduced in the first half of the book that are never fired that Chekhov should reasonably expect a 3 AM raid by the ATF.
Character development for Zoe is all over the place, and her becoming Anatole's adoptive childe is both helpful and detrimental to her because she starts to act in contradictory ways. At one point, it starts to feel like the author actually didn't like the protagonist. Anatole, too, undergoes a change at some point that is so sudden and inexplicable that he begins to feel like a different character altogether.
Finally, I am starting to feel like all of the novels in the series are being mistitled because they actually barely do anything to introduce the readers to the vampire clans the individual books' protagonists come from. Why title the book "Ravnos" when there are maybe four pages throughout it in total dedicated to discussing the clan and actually telling the reader something about it?
December 20, 2020
Great book following the clan of wanderers
The Ravnos are a fascinating clan. Much like the Ravnos clan novel set in 1999, this one is full of intrigue, interesting characters, and a great illustration of the beast that Kindred try to keep under control.
The Ravnos are a fascinating clan. Much like the Ravnos clan novel set in 1999, this one is full of intrigue, interesting characters, and a great illustration of the beast that Kindred try to keep under control.
March 15, 2020
Dark Ages: Ravnos begins where young Zoe's story left off in Dark Ages: Setite. Her sire was horrifically murdered by the Church and neither Andreas nor Meribah, the two she had grown closest to beyond Gregory, will aid or support her in her revenge. So she goes off to claim it for herself.
Like the VTM: Victorian Age Trilogy, a lot of the story takes place from the perspective of a fledgling vampire. While I've read about 20 of these VTM books, my first introduction to the franchise was through the game VTM: Bloodlines, where you played as a baby vamp. As such I definitely feel a deeper connection to neonates like Regina Blake and Zoe. Of course that could be because, unlike older vampires like Lucita, Zoe has a strong tie to her humanity.
While the characters of the preceding novel, Lasombra, felt rather hollow beyond their machinations, Zoe's conflict feels more real and more personal. She lost someone she cared about, she wants revenge. And as a reader who is moderately but not necessarily well informed of the World of Darkness, I can find myself relating to Zoe as she navigates the Vampire world. And boy is there a lot to navigate with the conflict between the Church and the vampires, Anatole and the heretics and the vampires against other vampires as usual.
Perhaps the most interesting of these conflicts besides Zoe's was that of the monk who killed Gregory, Isidro with himself and the Church's beliefs. There is a refreshingly gray perspective from which he looks at vampires that differentiates from his brethren. He considers the humanity of Gregory, of Anatole, of Zoe and it makes him less black and white as well as muddles the issue of Zoe's vendetta against him. It is the interactions between these characters that reveal these depths and add much needed warmth and even humor to an otherwise densely complicated story filled with the political complexities of both the vampire world and those of the Church in the 13th century. Without such explorations of humanity and morality, the story would very easily get tangled in the many threads of this series.
Like the VTM: Victorian Age Trilogy, a lot of the story takes place from the perspective of a fledgling vampire. While I've read about 20 of these VTM books, my first introduction to the franchise was through the game VTM: Bloodlines, where you played as a baby vamp. As such I definitely feel a deeper connection to neonates like Regina Blake and Zoe. Of course that could be because, unlike older vampires like Lucita, Zoe has a strong tie to her humanity.
While the characters of the preceding novel, Lasombra, felt rather hollow beyond their machinations, Zoe's conflict feels more real and more personal. She lost someone she cared about, she wants revenge. And as a reader who is moderately but not necessarily well informed of the World of Darkness, I can find myself relating to Zoe as she navigates the Vampire world. And boy is there a lot to navigate with the conflict between the Church and the vampires, Anatole and the heretics and the vampires against other vampires as usual.
Perhaps the most interesting of these conflicts besides Zoe's was that of the monk who killed Gregory, Isidro with himself and the Church's beliefs. There is a refreshingly gray perspective from which he looks at vampires that differentiates from his brethren. He considers the humanity of Gregory, of Anatole, of Zoe and it makes him less black and white as well as muddles the issue of Zoe's vendetta against him. It is the interactions between these characters that reveal these depths and add much needed warmth and even humor to an otherwise densely complicated story filled with the political complexities of both the vampire world and those of the Church in the 13th century. Without such explorations of humanity and morality, the story would very easily get tangled in the many threads of this series.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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August 13, 2016Language: hungarian
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews