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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Generally Strong Collection Marred by some Vamp Romance Pulp, August 20, 2009
This review is from: By Blood We Live (Paperback)
Adams continues to develop his skills as an anthologist, coming up with an excellent vampire collection to match his earlier post-holocaust and zombie reprint anthologies. BBWL avoids the odd politicization that made "The Living Dead" a bit of a dog's breakfast (no abortion rights or gun control vampire tales here) but falls victim to some extent to the overall problems tainting vampire literature.
I speak here of the vampire hunk / babe syndrome, the sexy vampire as object of love / desire. Besides not being very horrific, this worldview produces not only the questionable excesses of Anne Rice, but even worse the romance novel bodice rippers that have slowly cluttered up the horror section of Borders like cholesterol. Adams evidently thought it would be fun to include some of these pulp authors to contribute to this anthology, and as a result he got a few weak pieces in the mix. The Saint Crow and Banks pieces are draining, and the over-anthologized Rampling Gate story by Rice is almost a parody of her usual work, with a shy gentle innocent vampire who wins the heart of our Gothic heroine. There's also an almost literally plotless piece in here from the dubious "sexy horror' anthology "Hotter Than Hell" about some coed vampire seducing some guy she meets in a bar that is really cringeworthy. Bleh. I guess this junk is a noticeable and significant part of the genre, but this doesn't mean it has to be included in serious horror anthologies.
Adams also includes a few works by some of the umm, more prolific and less talented science fiction writers like Anderson and Turtledove in here, which also drag a bit, but at least they are short, unlike the Banks & Saint Crow pieces which are purgatorial in duration. We also have an oddity piece, a very short story by the Night Watch Russian dude, which is wafer thin, but OK.
Not to discourage you though, there are far more hits than misses here. The stories by Gaiman, Nix, Tanith Lee, Hill, Williams, etc are all excellent. Two standouts are the long and excellent Langan piece and the new author work by Gabriela Lee, featuring a unique Filipino vampire species.
All in all, an excellent collection with a lot of interesting work, and you can always skim through the lamer stuff. It's good to see big horror anthologies coming out regularly from Night Shade, and Adams is slowly ascending the ranks of anthologists. He's not quite a Datlow yet, but he's on his way, and readers will benefit from tracking his progress.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Uneven Vampire Anthology, March 30, 2010
This review is from: By Blood We Live (Paperback)
By Blood We Live is a massive anthology of vampire fiction clocking in at 500 pages and nearly a quarter of a million words. The book features stories by some of the top names in horror/fantasy literature including Stephen King, Anne Rice, Neil Gaiman, Harry Turtledove, Tanith Lee, Brian Lumley, and more. However despite the star-power of the authors it fails to escape being labeled "uneven" as is the fate of so many anthologies with such a diverse group of authors.
Adams, who edited Night Shade's "The Living Dead" has proven himself to be a capable anthologist and he presents many outstanding stories culled from over the past few decades (although most are fairly recent). Stephen King's "One for the Road" is the oldest story in the collection, originally published in 1977 and collected in King's "Night Shift". It is a short side story to King's vampire epic " Jerusalem 's Lot " relating the tale of a battle with vampires on a lonely road during a snowstorm.
Harry Turtledove's "Under St. Peter's" is one of the more interesting stories in the book although not as controversial as some claim. The master of the alternate history genre presents a tale in which Jesus did not die on the cross but rather became a vampire and is imprisoned beneath St. Peter's Basilica.
Norman Partridge's "Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu" is a sequel/continuation of Bram Stoker's Dracula and deals primarily with the character of Quincey Morris, the Cowboy who helped kill the vampire in the original novel.
"Child of an Ancient City " by Tad Williams looks at the vampire mythology from a different stance. William's vampire is from the Middle Eastern mythology and a far cry from the seductive, sexy vampires of most modern tales.
By Blood We Live's strength is its diversity of tales ranging from the Gothic to the Sci-Fi themed stories of Garth Nix to the revisionist fairy tale of Neil Gaiman. Many of the stories here have been oft reprinted such as Rice's "The Master of Ramplinig Gate" so there's a good chance you've encountered some of these along the way. The one weakness of the book is that there is few too many of the hunky sexy vampires for my taste. The book shelves are overloaded with vamp stories of this type thanks to Twilight and the Sookie Stackhouse series and I could have done without them here. That aside, this is a solid anthology
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3.0 out of 5 stars
"By Blood We Live", October 29, 2010
This review is from: By Blood We Live (Paperback)
Vampires and zombies continue to be incredibly popular, and after editing a collection of zombie stories in Living Dead, John Joseph Adams now turns to the tale of the vampire in By Blood We Live. Featuring stories from Stephen King to Neil Gaiman to Kelley Armstrong to Jane Yolen; after reading this book you'll either be sick of the blood-sucking fiends or be stocking up on garlic and crosses.
The collection kicks off with Neil Gaiman's twisted tale of Snow White moving on to the only short story Anne Rice has published, "The Master of Rampling Gate." The book features thirty-six vampire stories including writers like Robert J. Sawyer, Garth Nix, and Eric Van Lustbader: writer's you wouldn't expect to be in this collection. It runs the gamut from the terrifying to the romantic to the steamy to the outlandish to the science fiction type. One of the most disturbing stories is from Harry Turtledove, "Under St. Peter's," as a newly elected pope must perform a sacred ritual under the gaze of an unknown order, where they travel deep beneath the Vatican and find a man waiting there, a man who has been there for a very long time, a man we all know very well . . . and he's hungry for blood.
While overall readers may realize that there are only so many ways to tell a vampire story and that some featured in this collection may seem similar and somewhat mundane, By Blood We Live gives readers a chance to get their fill on these denizens of the night, as well as discovering a number of new authors they may never have planned to read.
Originally written on December 21st, 2009 ©Alex C. Telander.
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