Vadriel Vail

By Vincent Virga

Book Overview

Set in the milieu of New York's Gilded Age aristocracy, Vadriel Vail vividly explores excesses and arrogance from the heights of glittering society to the depths of poverty in unimaginably horrific immigrant slums. Romance, secrets, and high stakes action, exceptional women and extraordinary men are swept into a whirlwind of love and forbidden desire.

Armand de Guise, dangerous scion of a New York financial empire, is both handsome and loathsome. Wrought with guilt over an egregious encounter, he turns his lust, then love, toward young, brilliant, and ethereally handsome Vadriel Vail, Newport, RI's lavender-eyed golden boy of wealth and privilege. But Vadriel is soon in the arms of Placidia Van Leer, a perfect social match. As Vadriel crucifies himself on duty and doubt, appetite and anxiety, Armand looms, menacing and melodramatic. Placidia, her prized Vadriel in her bed, grows terrified that someone, something else will steal him away. Can redemption and true love become one?

With hyperbolic exuberance, classic in form and relentlessly entertaining, Vadriel Vail is an historical gay romance of the highest order, a stunning follow-up to Gaywyck.

"Vincent Virga understands that the Gothic is always about the secret, vexed attraction of virtue for vice and vice for virtue, the first unsure of whether it wants to ennoble or be degraded, the second of whether it wants to degrade or be ennobled. That engine pulses through this wild, magnificently excessive novel, which teems with the social and sexual life of queer Gilded-Age New York." - Peter Trachtenberg, The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists in New York

"As melodramatic, mysterious and menacing a gay gothic romance as one might desire on the heels of the classic Gaywyck." - Layla McCay, The Queer Bookshelf: a reader's guide

"Luminous and beguiling, a profound mosaic of allusion and desire, Virga's novel returns to the literary scene just in time: we need and deserve transformative love - this epic torch that is Vadriel Vail lights the way." - Tom Cardamone, Momentary Aberrations

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1959902334
• ISBN13: 9781959902331
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Requeered Tales
• Length: 410 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Vadriel Vail- in the Grand Romantic Tradition- with a twist

Basically, the story is about 22-year-old Vadriel Vail, wealthy, handsome, beautiful, whose parents and brother died in a boating accident, leaving him in the care of an old business manager. Sheltered from life in an English public school, and preoccupied with his spiritual life, he is actually too beautiful to stay in a monastery he retreats to because he upsets the tranquil balance of the monks. So he is forced to re-enter the world. On the other side, there is Armand de Guise, rich, beautiful, older, far more sophisticated, who feels the world is his to own, including the people in it. He fancies the cute younger brother of one of the Italian call boys he uses, and, when the younger man (Angelo della Fiore) resists him, Armand rapes him. When Armand runs into Vadriel in Newport, however, he begins to change, and over the course of the book his love for Vadriel causes him to become a much better man, devoted to Vadriel, though their relationship is something that is difficult for both of them. Meanwhile, naive Vadriel has also met a beautiful young, headstrong woman named Placide Van Leer, who falls in love with him and they marry. Vadriel does not understand that the friendship he has with the woman, whom he actually loves, is not Love in the passionate sense.The marriage to Placide, however, is not the only complication standing in the way of the two men, though it is a big one. There is also the world's approbation about two men making love together, far more acute in the early 20th century than in the early 21st, where it is still a strong factor in many places. Also, there is the matter of Armand's rape of the young servant Angelo, which comes back to haunt him in a dramatic moment. Vadriel, too, has to deal with his own strong Catholic convictions, his attention to good and evil and his spirituality, and whether or not succumbing to physically expressing his love for Armand is evil or the true expression of God's love. It takes literally the whole book for the men to come together, and in the final few pages it seems almost too much verbiage. But then it is written like a nineteenth-century romantic novel.Hey, though the novel moved me and made me hungry for the kind of passions the two heroes feel, it isn't a perfect novel- in many places, like Gaywyck, it is sometimes over-written, with lots of classical allusions and quotations. Armand's conversion seems almost too easy- it is like once he sees Vadriel he decides to completely reform himself and never falters. And the fact that he and Vadriel are another pair of absolutely gorgeous people that are filthy rich and can indulge their every whim (provided their consciences allow it), make it so much more unreal. But that is part of the romantic form, I suppose. There is a lot of symbolism of angels ("Vadriel" is an angel's name, there is a character named "Gabriel" who introduces Vadriel to sex between men and, of course "Angelo della Fiore," which means "Angel of the Flowers". When Arma

A classic gay romance?

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, considering the mixed reviews it got, but after it arrived I ended up reading it within 24 hours. That alone should make obvious that I was keen to see how things developed.Set in the early 1900's, this is the story of Vadriel Vail and Armand de Guise, two very different men, whom it would seem are destined only to be able to able to make known their love for one another in longing gazes and far too infrequent moments together that leave the reader rather frustrated, but certainly eager to find out whether they are able to overcome the seemingly impossible obstacles between them. These vary from religious beliefs to dark pasts and worst of all, Vadriel's marriage.It's a good read, however be warned: The constant quoting of historical texts, the sometimes cliched talk (which can in fact be quite humorous) and the melodrama of the main female character and her kin can sometimes be a little wearing. In addition, those of you after a piece of gay erotica should look elsewhere, though that's not to say the book is...disappointing in certain aspects.