Thanks to everyone who has given Mr. JM Wayland’s new Coming-of-Age Fantasy book, DORIAN VANE AND THE VAMPIRE’S BLOOD, a chance. It should be very interesting to see what people think as the reviews start coming in, but the fact that it’s now in the company of books by Rowling, Tolkien, Madeleine l’Engle, and even the appalling, but inexplicably popular Ursula K. Le Guin is reason for a very small degree of optimism that it and its successors will be numbered in their company for decades to come.

That’s probably not the safe way to bet, but it is off to a good start. Also, what is with those covers? Aside from The Hobbit and A Wrinkle in Time, the Dorian Vane cover looks considerably better than the other top ten books in the category. I suppose that can’t hurt.

And in an inevitable sign that the book is squarely in Gamma country, it has already received its first fake one-star rating sans review, explanation or verified purchase. Someone is very unhappy about this particular entrant to the category…

In the meantime, an excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE: Somerset House

Dorian Vane sat on his thinking stump at the bottom of the forest garden and watched a beetle climb a blade of grass. The beetle was shiny and black and appeared to know exactly where it was going, which put it considerably ahead of most people Dorian had met in his eleven years.

The stump was the remains of an ash tree that had come down in a storm the year he turned five. His grandfather had the trunk cleared and the timber stacked, because Edward Somerset did not waste timber, but he left the stump where it stood. Dorian claimed it that same summer, and it had been generally regarded as his ever since. It had been a giant stump when he was five, and it was still the right height for sitting and thinking six years later. It was at the bottom of the garden, which meant nobody came down to find him unless they had something that required saying. And it was under the biggest oaks, where the forest canopy closed overhead and turned the sunlight green and dark, which mattered to Dorian more than he usually admitted.

His dark glasses were pushed up on his head. Here under the trees, with the sunlight filtered through at least three layers of greenleaf, the brightness dropped to the level his eyes could endure without complaint. They were, in several ways, unusual eyes. They were silver-grey, pale as rain on slate, with pupils that were not round but vertically slit, like a cat’s. And in the dark, they reflected light like a fox’s. No one else in the family had eyes like his. No one Dorian had ever met or even heard of had eyes like his. People stared, or said nothing, or said something out of the side of their mouth in the apparent belief that he was deaf as well. His glasses protected him from their stares the same way they protected him from the light; they put a wall between Dorian and the world.

The garden climbed the slope behind him in three terraces his grandmother had built up over forty years. The herbs nearest the kitchen door were rosemary, sage, thyme, things she cooked with and things she used in workings, which were occasionally the same plants. Next were the vegetable rows, then the old roses on the second terrace, and then the trees running down the slope to where the ground flattened out and the moss took over. The paths were swept clean down the grey bedrock that lay a hand’s breadth under the whole country and sat several inches below the moss and loam on either side. His grandmother said the bedrock was what gave the land its character. His grandfather said that sweeping those paths had taken him the better part of ten years.

On Saturday mornings, Dorian and his grandfather would roam the garden like forest rangers, brooms in hand, making sure that the vegetation hadn’t dared to encroach upon his grandmother’s cherished paths. It seemed to Dorian that every year, the forest gave up a little more hope of ever reconquering the exposed ground.

Beyond his stump the ground dropped to a stream, and beyond the stream it rose to open pasture, and beyond the pasture were the moors. You could see them from the upstairs windows, miles of heather and gorse and granite, running all the way north until the sky got in the way. His grandfather said the moors were the finest thing about the property, which was generous praise for a landscape that was mostly rocks and rain and sheep with strongly held opinions about fences.

A thrush was singing somewhere above him. The beetle reached the top of its grass blade, paused, and appeared to reconsider the entire enterprise. Dorian watched it with the sympathy of a fellow creature who frequently climbed trees only to discover there was nothing at the top beyond the occasional empty birdsnest.

“Dor! Dor! Dorian!”

His grandmother’s voice, from the top of the garden. It wasn’t her emergency voice. This was the ordinary one, albeit with a certain note in it that meant right now.

He reached up with both hands and pulled his glasses down. The lenses were tinted dark, mirrored on the outside, and the world dimmed comfortably behind them. He stood up, brushed the moss off his trousers, and walked up the winding path that curved through the trees.

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This is the result of an experiment that got very badly out of hand. After finishing The Refutation of Kant, I definitely had the sense that my analytical engine could use a break and decided to let my mind coast a while. No more amphibolies, contemplations of the true nature of reality or das Ding an sich, no more irrational numbers, imaginary numbers, or infinite sets, no more deconstructing the construction account, and no attempting to decide which aspect of the Veriphysical philosophy to develop next. So the day after Team Castalia finished deciding what was to go into the combined print edition that resulted in The Return of the Real, I found myself dwelling upon all the various nonsensicalities of the Wizarding World concoted by Ms JK Rowling.

I believe that many years ago, I was among the first to point out the absolute absurdities of the Quidditch rules, though I was far from the only one. But there were so many more things that made no sense, such as the pointless points system, the insane dual economies, the bizarre competitions, and the upside-down nature of a craven, spoiled elite that left one wondering how it had gotten there in the first place. Which, in light of recent revelations, actually tends to reconstruct the Wizarding World as a much darker fictional universe than anyone had ever imagined, one in which Tom Riddle is actually the hero seeking vengeance for his childhood abuse at the hands of a schoolmaster with a very dark and nasty secret.

But that’s neither here nor there. My main thought was this: what if the protagonist of an academy novel was not despised, but loved? What if he wasn’t a passive lens for the reader to pass through the world, but a character with strength, independence, and a will of his own? What if there were consequences to historical actions, and if the present was the result of past decisions? And what if the Silent Academy wasn’t the only school to which the Inghitaran elite sent their children? One question led to another, and another, and the sum total of the answers is now available for your exploration if you happen to be so inclined.

While the core concept is obviously derived from the British magical school tradition, the end result reads more as if Susan Cooper was the primary literary influence, with perhaps a dash of Lloyd Alexander, as the various Red Team reviews have noticed.

• This is one of the strongest Harry Potter-inspired school fantasies I’ve read. It borrows a great deal from Rowling’s structure, but it has sufficiently strong prose, characterization, and worldbuilding that it gradually stops feeling like imitation and starts feeling like a genuine series in its own right.
• The novel clearly draws from the greats of classic children’s fantasy while forging its own path. The most obvious surface parallel is the magical boarding school with house sorting, rivalries, feasts in a great hall, and a boy discovering his powers and place in a hidden world. Wyrmwick echoes Hogwarts in structure, but the execution diverges sharply. It captures the excitement of arrival and belonging but leans harder into quiet character moments and institutional realism. The story has Susan Cooper’s feel for deep time, hidden powers in the land, and a boy awakening to a larger, dangerous heritage without flashy destiny tropes. Overall, Dorian Vane and the Vampire’s Blood is a strong, heartfelt addition to the magical-school genre—loyal to its influences while carving out a distinctive, moor-rooted identity. Fans of thoughtful fantasy with real emotional texture and British mythic flavor will find it deeply satisfying.
• Dorian Vane and the Vampire’s Blood is an exceptionally high-quality children’s fantasy novel. It honors the rich, atmospheric traditions of classic British folklore while implementing the rigorous, satisfying world-building mechanics found in modern American fantasy. By replacing cheap whimsy with tactical depth, J.M. Wayland has crafted a story that respects the intelligence of young readers.

Dorian Vane has silver eyes and no idea why.

Raised by his grandparents on the quiet Somerset moors, Dorian has spent his whole life hiding behind a pair of mirror-shaded glasses. Then the letter from Wyrmwick College arrives, and he is pulled from his comfortable home in the countryside into an exciting world of magic and wonder.

Wyrmwick is a school like no other, ancient, magnificent, and impossible, carved into a mountainside above a lake that reflects its stone towers back into the deep waters. Here, students learn how to hold fire in their hands, to shape metal with their thoughts, and to create wards that protect the living from things that dwell in the dark and hunt in the night. At Wyrmwick, Dorian finds unexpected friends, magical challenges, a misfit house that claims him as its own, and professors who seem to know more about his heritage than he does.

But the ancient college conceals old and bloody secrets in its foundations. Even hidden behind his glasses, Dorian’s eyes mark him as something the magical world hasn’t seen in centuries, and someone at the school wants him gone. In addition to his lessons, he learns that wonder and danger stalk the same stone corridors, and that being special is not the same as being safe.

Dorian Vane and the Vampire’s Blood is the gripping first novel in a gothic magical fantasy series of courage, self-discovery, and the darkness that every new generation finds that it must face.

Now available for Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

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