Ad Eternum

“Ad Eternum is so perfectly balanced with exactly what the reader needs to know about each character and each plot thread without any of the clutter of a longer book resulting in a polished gem. The narrative is the pure essence of a story, longer than a short story and packing more into its pages, but not as long as a novel—a perfect example of the novella as an art form. Ad Eternum is, indeed, an argument in favor of writers producing more novellas.”

Elizabeth Bear’s novella Ad Eternum is sometimes sexy, sometimes sweet, frequently charming, and made up entirely of loneliness and moral ambiguity.

It is the story of “the wampyr” calling himself Jack Prior currently, on his return after many years in Europe to an alternate history New Amsterdam that might actually be our New York. It’s never quite clear whether the differences in names are how he calls them by their old names, or if it really is an alternate reality, and in the end it doesn’t really matter.

He finds the world changed from how he last saw it and is faced with integrating himself into a modern world where the existence of wampyrs is public but not exactly accepted, where sorcerers and charlatans all want something from him, and where old friends and new ones intersect with his decision to settle in or to move on.

Elizabeth Bear captures the mentality of someone who has lived hundreds of years logically and clearly: everything comes freighted with the old ways, old memories, historical references that were made firsthand. Immortality to Prior is less a matter of accepting or wanting to live forever and more the reality that one day he won’t want to anymore—though he has not yet reached that day.

He is a thoughtful, calm personality in a city of angry mortals and the newly undead, and the contrast is always interesting to watch unfold. The ubiquitous sexiness of the vampire is addressed delicately and honestly, and very little fuss is made about it in the book; it simply is, and the story concentrates on more original issues.

At just under 100 pages, Ad Eternum is a short book and a quick read, but it doesn’t feel thin or underdeveloped. In fact, the story is full of intriguing ideas, distinctively fleshed out characters, and lush descriptions.

Ad Eternum is so perfectly balanced with exactly what the reader needs to know about each character and each plot thread without any of the clutter of a longer book resulting in a polished gem. The narrative is the pure essence of a story, longer than a short story and packing more into its pages, but not as long as a novel—a perfect example of the novella as an art form. Ad Eternum is, indeed, an argument in favor of writers producing more novellas.

A clean, involving, complex read, Ad Eternum expertly handles all the plot points and emotional and social issues de rigeur for a vampire story without leaving the reader with any lingering sense of déjà vue.