Vampires

[antiloquax]

A friend of mine has just told me she likes Vampire novels, so I was thinking I would recommend some to her.
I wonder whether there are any you might recommend.
I have already read (and enjoyed):
Dracula (d'uh)
Twilight (only read the first one - didn't love it, but I like the films )
Fevre Dream
I am Legend
Salem's Lot
Interview with the Vampire

I've heard good things about Carrion Comfort - has anyone read this?

a

 

[D_Davis]

The Joe Pitt series, by Charlie Huston

 

[antiloquax]

The Joe Pitt series, by Charlie Huston

Thanks - just looked at the amazon reviews of "Already Dead" - sounds very good!
a

 

[D_Davis]

And my favorite is Some of Your Blood, by Theodore Sturgeon. An absolute masterpiece.

 

[j d worthington]

Carrion Comfort isn't your usual type of vampire; it's the psychic vampire theme, and yes, it's a good novel. A few spots where it's a bit over-the-top, in my opinion, but on the whole a very fine piece.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Mind Worm By C . M Kornbluth

 

[BAYLOR]

Bats Belfry 1926 short story by August Derleth

 

[Dinosaur]

They Thirst by Rober R McCammon is good, Vampires take over a city a co-opt the emergency services to find victims.
The Passage Trilogy (well the two books published so far) by Justin Cronin.

 

[Randy M.]

Sticking with novels, since that's what the requester ... er ... requested ...

13 Bullets by David Wellington. Fast paced action/adventure vampire hunting with some of the most vicious vampires I've seen in recent fiction. Decent if sketched in characterization. It's a series; haven't read the rest and probably won't, though my daughter was caught up in them.

Motherless Child by Glen Hirshberg. Hirshberg has become a favorite writer of mine even if this is not my favorite of his works (loved the story collection, The Two Sams and his first novel, The Snowman's Children). That said, this is a solid performance, very well-written, incorporating Southern-style story-telling (takes place mainly in North Carolina) with prose rhythms and character insights that sometimes evoke Bradbury. The two central characters, Sophie and Natalie, are strong; if I found this a bit less engaging than his other fiction it's probably because I felt less connected to the main character, Natalie, than to Sophie.

The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers. Not your normal vampire-fiction vampires, these lamia are more ethereal and unknowable, and deadly when their gaze finds you. This is not just vampire fiction but historical fiction of a high order.

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. Roller-coaster ride of a novel. Terrific characterization, a villain that isn't really a blood-sucker, but still vampiric, and a location called Christmasland that is quite eerie. Really like Vic McQueen, the main character, too.

Like Baylor, I tend to like vampires in short stories every bit as much or more than in novels. The Vampire Archives edited by Otto Penzler is a cornucopia of good vampire fiction. It probably supplants Alan Ryan's Vampires (a.k.a.: The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories) as the definitive anthology. Though having both would be even better.


Randy M.

 

[Pedro Del Mar]

Fevre Dream
I am Legend
Salem's Lot
Interview with the Vampire

All above are excellent choices, agree with the suggestion of The Passage Trilogy - The Passage was my book of the year when it was released.

Salem's Lot still gives me bad dreams when a give it a re-read!

 

[Michael Colton]

If your friend likes Anne Rice, that would mean quite a list of vampire books she could continue with all within the same world.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Films not novels, but Fright Night I & II (the originals) are brilliant.

 

[BAYLOR]

They Thirst by Rober R McCammon is good, Vampires take over a city a co-opt the emergency services to find victims.
The Passage Trilogy (well the two books published so far) by Justin Cronin.

It's long out of print.

 

[sandsinger]

My favorite vampire novels of all time are the Necroscope series and it's sequel the Vampire World series by Brian Lumley, which also led to a number of further sequels not dealing primarily with vampires.

It's the story of the origin of vampirism as a symbiote in similar vein to the Goa'uld in the Stargate universe.

The parasites are native to another world that became entangled with the earth through a pair of one way portals, again similar to stargates, although the portals are permanent and were created by a cosmic disaster that destabilized the other 'Vampire' world, creating an irregular orbital and rotational cycle which devastated virtually all life on that world and allowed the vampires to become the Lords of that world.

Living in massive rock formation towers in the perpetually darkened northern hemisphere, they exercise their super powerful psychic abilities and physical prowess to dominate and prey on a small, captive population of human 'gypsies' who went to that world from earth in the ancient past, as a 'servant' race to one of the vampire lords.

The human protagonists in the modern day on earth are a team of psychic spies linked to the British secret service who discover the reality of the origin of vampirism and endeavor to protect the earth from further incursions of the vampires through the newly unearthed gate from their world to ours. The gate which allowed the original 'Dracula' vampire to reach earth was buried centuries ago, preventing any further travel from there to here, but recent Russian nuclear experiments have unearthed it, once again allowing vampires to come here. The British psychic spy team have earthly antagonists as well, in the form of the Russian branch of psychic spies.

The only caveat I would give in recommending this series to a friend is that in some of the later novels, there are several very graphically described sex scenes between vampires and between humans and vampires, so probably don't offer this series to your friend if she's young and/or delicate.

 

[BAYLOR]

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons.