Arbieroo reviewed Children of the night by Dan Simmons
Review of 'Children of the night' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Here's a book about vampires, in fact, Dracula himself is wandering around, 500 years old and tired of life. It's only third vampire book I can remember reading and it's old enough to have been written before vampire literature had been reduced to a joke by Meyer et al. Like one of the other vampire books I've read, My Name is Legion, vampirism is treated as a disease - in this case a rare genetic disease - not contagious at all. The details are carefully worked out and plausible to this not overly knowledgable-of-biology reader. Hence shelve under SF as well as horror.
Most of that horror comes from the reminiscences of Dracula who is treated as being the real historical Vlad Dracula. These memories come from the known facts of his life and are sickening in away that made up horrors aren't - because real people suffered in their …
Here's a book about vampires, in fact, Dracula himself is wandering around, 500 years old and tired of life. It's only third vampire book I can remember reading and it's old enough to have been written before vampire literature had been reduced to a joke by Meyer et al. Like one of the other vampire books I've read, My Name is Legion, vampirism is treated as a disease - in this case a rare genetic disease - not contagious at all. The details are carefully worked out and plausible to this not overly knowledgable-of-biology reader. Hence shelve under SF as well as horror.
Most of that horror comes from the reminiscences of Dracula who is treated as being the real historical Vlad Dracula. These memories come from the known facts of his life and are sickening in away that made up horrors aren't - because real people suffered in their thousands.
The book is a competent story, if a little predictable (I guessed most of the twists and revelations) but was slightly disappointing in that I am used to Simmons being much more ambitious. This tale is of the scope of A Winter Haunting rather than Hyperion Cantos, Ilium-Olympos, Drood or The Terror.
Bonus plus point: no spell-breaking lit.crit. essays!
