Since the massive resurgence on vampires in pop culture, most of the media has focused on pretty, tortured vampires that just want to love… and eat… sometimes at the same time. Even for the die-hard vampire fiction lover, it can become easy to just think about vampire stories in the vein of Angel vs. Spike, or Edward vs. Jacob. It’s all about the romance, after all! Well… not so much, as it turns out. For a very long time there was no equation between vampires and sex. It was all death, or horror, or caution. In fact, at this point in time, the vampire fan has a wealth of various fiction to draw from. Everything from the scary to the romantic to the blackly comedic is contained in current vampire literature, and all the intrepid geek has to do is look around for it.

And none of us have to look very far. In this anthology, the editor pulls together stories from 25 authors, packed into 430 pages of the most varied vampire lore I have ever seen in one place. The topics include coming of age tales, gentle romance, dark family sagas and everything on the spectrum of light and fluffy to dark and terrible. Not to mention the vampires who don’t drink blood or are mortal. In fact, in one story the vampires are essentially a Macguffin and we never even see them! The editor here really did her homework. The book begins with an introduction to vampire fiction that actually educated this old fan of vampire mythology and continues into the stories, with each given an interesting introduction and the reason why the story was included.

There are also vampire stories from authors I never thought wrote a story about them. While I expected the likes of Charlaine Harris to be included, Charles de Lindt was a terrific surprise for me. Apparently, he’s only written two vampire stories in his career, and one of them is contained in the anthology. Furthermore, there were vampire authors who have been writing such stories for years that I will now have to look up to get more of their fantastic work. In this latter case, the stories acted like teasers for the main series. If there is more of that to come, well I am already a big fan.

Starting with the first story, I knew that this was going to be a high quality collection. All of the pieces were outstanding. However, of the 25 stories, my favorite had to be “La Vampiresse” by Tanith Lee, which I reread a couple of times on the spot, the ending having such a twist I had to go back and determine which reality I wanted to accept or deny. I also liked Kelley Armstrong’s “Zen and the Art of Vampirism” as well as a story called “Vampires Anonymous” for the humor, as they were easily the funniest stories in the anthology. What I found interesting, given my total love of the Sookie Stackhous series, is that I was not in love with the Harris story “Dahlia Underground.” While it fills in some blanks for me, it’s pretty obvious that Harris is simply a weaker writer than many of her contemporaries. It doesn’t make her books less enjoyable (and I still love to read her work), it was just clear that her style is far fluffier than many other writers in the genre.

Something that stood out for me about this anthology is that it took me a long time to read, for some reason. I tend to be a fast reader, and when I like a book, it tends to go even faster. However, this anthology took weeks to read, which I did not anticipate. This may have been due to the quality of the stories. Light, fluffy fare is always easier to read, and many of these stories are dense and thoughtful. I found I was taking more time to process each story before I went on to the next. So, it does become a perfect reading medium if you have to take public transportation, or you need some good fiction across short time periods. I know there’s a bathroom joke that should be obligatory here, but I’ll refrain from giving that too much thought. Instead, I think you will be surprised at how this book becomes an ever-present part of that stack of books waiting to be finished.

The bottom line is that this is a wide array of stories that are just really solidly written. You’ll want to savor this collection for a while because they are all just so good and different than the usual fare that we get right now. In this case, vampires are a little like chocolate: in a world of waxy, off-brand knockoffs, this is the good stuff from the specialty chocolatier. Enjoy.

   -- Sara Paige