What would you do if, in spite of having all the power and immortality of a vampire, you’re still dead broke and beholden to the same “late stage” capitalistic pressures that we all are? What if you spend your nights watching the money drain from your account like the blood draining from your latest meal? These are the questions being asked in Michael J. Seidlinger’s new novella, BROKEULA.
James Sugre is a down on his luck vampire who’s out of cash and out of options. When he and his new business partner, Laura, utilize James’ gifts in a last ditch marketing scheme, they’re put at odds with James’ sire and leader of the global cabal, known as the Vampire Nation, who now see James’ new business venture as a threat to not only his business but vampire culture as a whole.
Brokeula’s premise is interesting in itself. Using the more mundane concerns of a vampire to satirize the financially dependent concerns we all face in a world where the wealth gap is an ever expanding chasm is timely, to say the least. Another detail that strikes me as particularly timely is the idea of a globe-spanning, secretive group of nefarious elites that engineer society for the sake of their own greed, which hits pretty hard in light of recent events and certain files that I’ll spare you from going on any further about. But, I think most of us can identify with how tough life has been in what seems like an ever increasingly dystopian reality. In those regards, Brokeula keys in on our current zeitgeist.
Michael J. Seidlinger puts us directly into the head of a character who is having a hard time seeing the bright side of life and employs self-destructive behavior to deal with his despondency. We are told how he feels about his circumstance. We are told about the potential clash between him and his possibly scorned sire. We are told that the Vampire Nation is the single most socially influential force in the world. All these things we are told in the first person narration of our main character but unfortunately, the details within the writing don’t actually show us these things in vivid detail.
Along with the lack of narratively tangible detail, the other main issue holding this story back may very well be the brevity of it. A world this rich, bubbling with so much lore just under the surface, begs to be explored in greater detail and opportunity for the characters to develop. We’re not really given an idea of how much time has passed between chapters as James Sugre’s empire grows. Being immortal, it would have been nice to see how his march toward success and his immortality were intertwined in a deeper way than just in his ability to sire more vampires.
BROKEULA is full of biting social commentary and dry wit from a writer who is very adept at word wielding. But I don’t think we, the audience, are given quite enough to chew on from a story that, by its very nature, deserves to be twice as long and much more vividly described. I’d be interested in another entry in the world of Brokeula as long as Michael J. Seidlinger really dug in and mined all that gold that is right under the surface, waiting to be unearthed.
