80 books like Something in the Blood

The most iconic and somehow most misrepresented vampire story of all time. I read this book because it was iconic and for no other reason. It was not long before I began to see this book's Christian themes and messages. Though the book may not be explicitly Christian, the influences and messages are most apparent in Mina Harker.

I loved how the character of Mina becomes a prototype of what people would eventually call “The Final Girl”, not because of her physical strength or survival instincts, but because of her unwavering faith in God. I knew this was essentially a story of good and evil, but I was wonderfully surprised by this being a story of faith vs flesh and corruption vs holiness.

This book has engendered controversy for almost forcefully bridging the gap between the 15th Century Wallachian Prince Vlad III or Vlad the Impaler or Dracula. Stoker had already constructed his character, called “Count Wampyr,” before he learned of his future namesake. However, he quite clearly establishes a connection between the two through an explanation provided by Abraham Van Helsing. The Dracula of the eponymous novel is a heavily fictionalized version of the real-life figure, but so are most similarly positioned characters in literature, film, and television. Florescu and McNally provide a cursory overview of Slavic and Balkan vampire folklore, a biographical sketch of Vlad the Impaler, and illuminate the process by which Stoker adapted this violent, cunning, and sometimes brilliant nationalist and military tactician into a fictional monster.

Whereas Barber expounds upon the anthropological origins of the vampire myth, McClelland focuses on the practices, principles, and logistics of killing the dead. The most familiar form comes in the unearthing and mutilation of bodies. McClelland explains the whys and wherefores of that practice, but he also gives their killers more than their due, explaining the role of vampire slayers as shamans, village elders, and quasi-religious figures during Europe’s transition from its pagan roots to modern Christianity. He demonstrates that vampires fell into an uneasy space between a fading system of peasant folklore and the organized religious rituals and beliefs that ultimately took their place. There are no vampires in the Bible, so where was the church during the vampire hysteria of the 1800s and how did they regard these mythical creatures? McClelland answers that and more. He also includes an overview of our modern conception of vampire slayers from… show more.

The figure of the vampire has become very familiar through portrayals in literature, stage, and cinema, but where does the myth itself originate?

Many have speculated on the roots of the vampire legend, ascribing it to various diseases, like porphyria or rabies. But Barber stripped away the cultural additions imposed on the legend by its fictional interpretation and looked for origins consistent with the bare, original legend.

A nice piece of folkloric detective work, and one that influenced my own book.

This little-known French vampire novel, published in 1825, includes the first fully realized female vampire. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, a young Hungarian woman, Alinska, mysteriously turns into a vampire after a French soldier pledges his love to her, then abandons her. After becoming a vampire, she travels to France where her husband Edouard is now remarried and has a family. Unable to stop herself, she preys upon Edouard’s family. The story is remarkable for creating the first sympathetic vampire and being the first to associate vampirism with Eastern Europe. Bram Stoker may have known it or similar French novels. I love the character development here and the possibility that this novel inspired the entire vampire tradition, including Dracula, yet has been largely ignored until recently.

I found some concepts in this book interesting.

For example, vampires can eat food, although it doesn’t sustain them as well as blood. In my novel, whilst they don’t eat food, and drink from blood bags, it is mainly blood from the vein that sustains them the most.

I think this is a similar concept, where vampires don’t necessarily need to drink blood from a human or an animal all the time. 

Auerbach’s book takes the vampire story into more contemporary territory and, some might say, into more treacherous waters. Although beginning again with Polidori, she follows the evolution of the vampire tale through to Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and Tony Scott’s 1983 film The Hunger (starring an elegantly wasted David Bowie). She shows how homoeroticism has been a part of the vampire narrative since its nineteenth-century inception, notably with Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla, and how readily the narrative lent itself as an allegory of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. I don’t agree with all of Auerbach’s interpretations, but she has some zinging one-liners.

If you’re not familiar with Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D you’re in for a treat. 

D is a vampire hunter traveling between remnants of human civilization after the vampires’ technology changed the world with rampant weather machines, DNA-spliced monsters, and slumbering technological marvels without master to command them. 

D is hired by Doris who’s been chosen to become a vampire bride, but between struggling against his other half as a vampire, werewolf lackeys, and bloodthirsty humans wanting Doris dead or alive, D has his work cut out for him. If you ever find yourself traveling the Frontier, D, alongside his sassy friend, is your guy. 

If there was one criticism I had of Interview With The Vampire, it was that there wasn’t enough Lestat. I can’t have been the only one because when Anne Rice decided to do a sequel, she didn’t keep following Louis, the tortured hero of the first book, but instead told us the story of his Maker.

I love that this book doesn’t try to repeat what the first part did and tell us another story of a vampire at odds with what he is. Lestat embraces the (after)life that is forced upon him. I admire the purity of his acceptance of what he is and having no regrets about what he must do to survive.

I love Anita Blake, the feisty, insecure, kick-butt heroine of this story. She’s everything I want in a protagonist: Strong and clever enough to solve her own problems, naive enough to think that will always be the case, and a stranger to her own heart. Lots of room for growth. And grow, she does.

This book (and series) lean more toward the paranormal romance side of urban fantasy, but it also has a dark and gritty noir feel that walks the line of horror. This genre mash-up checked all the boxes for me, keeping me invested in the characters, the world, and the heart-pounding plot.