Customer Reviews

Erotica Vampirica: Sensual Vampire Stories

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For a long time there were two kinds of vampire books. The angst-ridden romantic kind where the sex was either sublimated or took place "off-camera," and the bloody, gory horrific kind, where if there was any sex it was there to shock or horrify the reader. In the mid-1990s I began editing a series of erotic vampire anthologies where I tried to actually get at what we erotic about the vampire. I gave my authors a few rules, one of which was "no murder." Okay, maybe a tad of murder here and there--these aRE vampires after all--but not the murder of a sex partner, and not as the point of the story. "Erotica Vampirica" was the second volume of the erotic vampire series (preceded by Blood Kiss, and followed by Cherished Blood, and A Taste of Midnight). The book sold out fairly quickly and the small press that had done it did not have the dough to put it back in print, so now Blue Moon Books has done it. This is the original book pages replicated between a new (if dull) cover. If you like this book, you will also like "BLood Surrender," which is not a reprint, but is all new stories. And a reprint of "A Taste of Midnight" with several new stories added to it will also be out from Blue Moon Books in 2006.

Many stories in this collection are just ... or disturbing for the sake of being so. Several didn't even really have any plot to speak of. There were a few gems, some whose basic plot had potential to graduate to full books, but many lacked originality or taste. If I simply want erotica without much story I can frankly read ... forums. C. Tan should have read some more L.K. Hamilton's work and only let shorts that had somewhere close to that level of plot in to this collection (as I said there were a couple that really had potential). All in all, if you can find it cheap enough it would be worth it just for the few shorts that make the rest of the muck bearable. And don't forget that in short story collections you can always just skip 10 pages or so and read a totally new and unconnected story, as I often had to (something very unusual for me).

Erotica Vampirica is a better collection of stories than contained in Blood Kiss, also edited by Ms Tan. She has done a better job in this book at providing books that are both sensual and have a story to them.

Mist Kisses by Renee M. Charles is far and away the best story in the anthology, but there are worthy contributions by other authors that round out a much better collection this time around.

I would recommend this to anyone who owns Blood Kiss as it may renew your faith in Ms Tan's ability as an editor. Additionally, it is a well written collection of stories, so anyone with even a passing interest in erotic vampire stories would enjoy this book.

I truly rate this book as 3.5 stars. As with Blood Surrender, I'm an objective reader, not an author or involved with the publication of this book, so I'm again doing my best to give a fair review. I found the first story in this collection, "Mist Kisses" by Renee Charles, to be creative and among the best written, told by 22-year-old Johannes, whose mother was human and father a vampire. Johannes is ironically a vampire-hunter who meets gorgeous Tia, a photographer soliciting, 'Model (male) for experimental folklore photo fantasy series', who of course has much more to her than meets the eye. The other stories are graphically sexual and often violent, as the back cover clearly details, so if you find that offensive or are just not a fan of erotica, this book is also NOT meant for you.