My Favourite Vampire Books
How beautiful she looked in the moonlight! – Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla
Why I love Vampires
So we all know that I’ve inexplicably loved vampires since I was a toddler but I’m thirty-four now and they’re still one of my favourite supernatural entities. Honestly, I’d say a lot of it is their deliberately defying the rules of nature – they are the Undead. The word is interesting in itself – it’s not the true opposite of ‘dead’, because that would just be ‘alive’. No, it’s simply specifying that they’re not… quite right. The idea that they can willingly and consciously turn us into them (unlike werewolves or zombies who aren’t in their right minds in those forms) is also fascinating, as are their seductive qualities. And let’s face it: they bring the drama. See Dracula’s classic entrance, especially Bela Lugosi’s. The children of the night… what music they make.
Now, I haven’t read every vampire book under the moon and there are many more that are on my TBR, but for now here are my five favourite vampire books, from the classics to the twists on the classics to the modern icons.
My Five Favourites
Anno Dracula
Alright, so I’m going for the full series rather than picking one out in particular. I devoured these in my early twenties and they’re overdue a re-read. Essentially, they’re an alternate history – imagine if Dracula had been successful in his invasion of England and even turned Queen Victoria herself. With a cast of thousands led by Kate Reed and Geneviève Dieudonné (guest appearances include Lord Ruthven, Jack the Ripper, and the Red Baron), the series takes in fin de siècle London and Japan, the First World War, Fifties Rome, the USA in the Seventies, and much more.
Dracula
Yeah, I’ve already written a post all about how many issues I have with the adaptations, so this is just a reminder of the original work, which is full of latent dread and burgeoning modernity, steered by our plucky gang which include researcher extraordinaire Mina, her estate agent husband, and a cowboy.
Hungerstone
Ever read Carmilla and wanted it to be, well, even sexier? This Queer child did! Hungerstone is a sumptuous and scintillating spin on the original – honestly, I don’t know how it works in terms of copyright (I guess it’s out of it?), but the imagery is fantastic and Carmilla is genuinely quite unnerving. I’d be killing my arsehole husband and climbing into that carriage with her too.
Let the Right One In
I saw the (original) film in my first year of uni and I still remember the scene in which the bullies met their comeuppance. Deeply satisfying (sorry, not sorry). I then read the book a few years later and the unfolding relationship between Eli and Oskar is hauntingly beautiful. There’s a chill on that Swedish estate that’s only half down to the Scandinavian weather and the side adult characters are also delineated enough to be sad and pathetic and venal in various ways, until you want Oskar to escape everything with Eli.
’Salem’s Lot
Again, there’s a whole blog dedicated to the Lot already, but just to recap: the characterisation is as strong as Let the Right One In as we see the predation spread. It’s a vivid portrayal of Seventies small town life, which makes Barlow’s arrival so much more impactful. It can happen anywhere, after all…
Coldharbour: Reading up on Vampires
What’s the point of the study in 1 St Augustine’s if it can’t tell Alex at least something of what she needs to know about her latest nemesis?
Alex flicked through her notes. She’d spent the whole night thinking she was going mad, that her medication needed adjusting ASAP, that she must’ve really cracked to be thinking that two people she knew were suddenly vampires, and she must’ve read the same stuff about mirrors and crosses and the Holy Ghost over and over and over …
She hadn’t learnt much that she hadn’t seen in a Hammer Horror film: running water, religion, rosewood, reflection (lack thereof), not to mention the garlic. Silver, too. Lots of silver, even though Alex had thought that was only for werewolves, and they’d better not exist and all. What the books implied, though, was that moonlight regenerated a vampire and sunlight only debilitated it, not that Coldharbour got much sun in the winter.
Coldharbour II: The Dead Land comes out on Halloween. You can pre-order it and read the first in the series, Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death, now.
