The World on Blood: 8 [Hardcover]

Jonathan Nasaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1996

living in Northern California, horror novelist Nick Santos first enjoys the incredible world of these modern-day vampires, until a growing madness and murderous rage make him resolve to end his addiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this wryly horrific riff on self-help programs, Nasaw (Shakedown Street, 1993) joins the burgeoning ranks of writers who pick up echoes of vampirism in the rhythms of everyday relationships. His bloodsuckers are respectable citizens of El Cerrito, Calif., who treat their thirst as an addiction they can kick through weekly meetings of Vampires Anonymous (V.A.), which recovering vampire Nick Santos conducts like any other 12-step program. Complications arise when Jamey Whistler, a member of V.A. who sees its approach as cultlike, secretly begins to undermine the organization. V.A. is by no means a new concept (Jeffrey McMahan made it the focus of his 1991 satire, Vampires Anonymous), but Nasaw uses it to address the bigger issue of the consequences of a permissive society. With great dexterity, he choreographs scenes of Nick and Jamey's vamp. vs. vamp tango around chapters from Nick's gestating book, The World on Blood, an account of gay vampire life in San Francisco's Castro district in the 1970s. V.A. is portrayed as Nick's sobering wake-up call from his promiscuous lifestyle, and America's rush toward self-help movements as the inevitable response to decades of hedonistic self-indulgence. Vivid characters who veer between the comic and the tragic keep the preachiness at bay, gleefully underscoring the irony of a society seemingly addicted to anti-addiction therapies. Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Nasaw showcases the world's and the Bay Area's weirdest 12-step, self-help group: vampires. In other respects, they are just normal boomers trying to kick an addiction. The group contains two poles of power: leader Nick Santos and dissenter James Whistler. Their conflict drives the action as Whistler subverts the group by getting the members, one by one, to drink blood again. Reason? It makes for ecstatic sex, spun out here in all forms save those involving animals. Even babies enter the breathy fray, not as principals to be sure (Nasaw wisely keeping the American Family Association off his back) but as sources of blood of even higher libidinous content than adults'. Consequently, baby-snatching becomes a device to bring the two main characters together in a wild encounter at Whistler's ritzy Lake Tahoe chalet. Add necromancing by the witch Selene--the vampires' second favorite slurpy stop--and Nasaw has installed elements that his capable character development, mainly Nick's backsliding into imbibing, turn into a hedonistic fantasy. Entertaining for the Anne Rice crowd. Gilbert Taylor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult; First Edition edition (April 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525940669
• ISBN-13: 978-0525940661
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #620,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex and Blood...what more could you possibly want?, August 16, 2000

By 

vampress.net (Toronto Ontario) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World on Blood (Paperback)

I'll be blunt, i liked this book for the following reasons: lots o' blood, no big angsty loser woe is me Lestat-esque vamps, no immortal mindreading bloodsucking fiends, orgies like every third page, easy to read, and has a level of believability (is that a word?).

It was a refreshing twist on the vampire myth, and certainly a more believable one at that. This book is compared to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, but they're -extremely- different and I see no means for comparison. But mind you, I personally prefered The World on Blood to Rice's work that i've read (i've been stuck in the middle of Queen of the Damned for about a year now). *shrugs*

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly new look on the word of vampires and witches., October 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The World on Blood (Paperback)

This book was truely amazing. After reading it several times, I still get the urge to reach for it, even though I happen to have a stack of unread books else where. Jonathan Nasaw surely has something which most people seem to lack these days. He's creative and imaginative, yet manages to keep his feet on the ground, allowing a new and exciting look on vampires and witches to emerge. Nasaw's words are truely spell binding. The irony of the plot also grabs at the readers attention, further creating the title of a 'page turner'. 'The World on Blood' is best described as: 'Beautifully written, wildly satisfying, has something for everyone.' -Fangoria

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nasaw offers a great new twist on an age old tale., July 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The World on Blood: 8 (Hardcover)

In The World On Blood Jonathan Nasaw offers us a compelling, tightly written tale of contemporary vampire life. Funny, thought provoking and downright sexy Nasaw's book takes the reader on a wild ride from the darkside of the Bay Area on to Tahoe and finally to the Caribbean and back. Along the way Nick finds himself in a moral battle of good and evil as he struggles to maintain his sobriety from blood, prepare for fatherhood and save his 12 Step group, Vampires Anonymous, from a collective relapse. Not for the timid or faint of heart, this book contains well-written, but graphic, scenes of ritualistic group sex, murder and wiccan rites.