Customer Reviews

Vampire Taxonomy: Identifying and Interacting with the Modern-Day Bloodsucker

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Nice fun read for vampire fans. I've always enjoyed Meredith Woerner's articles on Io9.com. So if you are fimilar with her and enjoy a vampires this encyclopedia of all things hominus nocturna is for you!

Is this a book about popular cultural portrayals of vampires? Is this one of those half funny books that tells you how to survive some sort of supernatural or scientific nightmares? Is is a book of dating advice? This book by Meredith Woerner acts like all three and thus it sadly fails to fully give us what we expect from such books.

For a documentation or discussion of popular culture we require much better citations including a list of the books, TV shows, and movies she mentions. In fact, one of the things readers want from a pop culture book are such lists so they can go out and try to find those stories or images they found intriguing. This book is full of such tidbits but the lack of necessary lists and better citations was disappointing.

For a humorous book we want laughs. These need not be rolling on the floor moments, and indeed any horror subject which vampires should fit into, requires dark humor. The sort that makes us shake our heads and shudder while we chuckle softly. The sort that makes us a touch concerned about our own sanity as we take pleasure in such a creepy subject. The humor here wasn't that and it certainly was not rolling on the floor laughs either. It boarded on the uncomfortable humor we feel when people are stupid enough to believe that vampire wants to do anything other than drink from them.

As a how-to survival guide the advice is repeatedly leave or call in the experts. That's just tiresome after the third time. With some drawings of various types of vampires and descriptions of their abilities there is some promise here but it needed follow-through to be a survival guide.

Finally as dating advice goes this just was attempting to be too many different types of books at once to really be believable when the romantic suggestions came out. "Twillight" fans do really want to know how to find their own vamp and some ladies and gents are drawn to Dracula still. They deserve more advice than the repeated watch for these signs because it's all doomed.

For such a small book (190 pages) this attempted to do too many things at once. A dating the undead guide, a survival guide, poking fun at vampire ideas, or even a discussion of popular culture could have been well-done in such space but not all of those things.

Hilarious, informative and provocative -- all at the same time. A must-have for vampires, vampire-watchers and wannabee vampires.