Sipos captures the drab madness of Ceausescu's Romania, combining dark humor with nail-biting suspense as an American screenwriter teams up with a supermodel CIA rouge agent to drive a stake through the heart of the super Stalinist regime - and its diabolical leaders.
From the opening scenes in a gloomy Bucharest populated with vampires who serve the evil regime - and the ghouls and even orphans who grab at whatever human morsels they can, the story moves at near-breakneck speed to a climax so bizarre that the reader is left wanting another hundred pages of this stuff.
Sipos has a deft understanding of his subjects - socialism as vampirism - and Romania under the megalomaniac fist of super-Stalinist Nicolae Ceausescu and his obscene, venom-spitting wife, Elena. Some of the dialogue seems lifted nearly intact from Ion Pacepa's RED HORIZONS - a device that works perfectly in conveying the tragicomedy of those dark days in the 80's prior to the "Revolution" that ended with the bloody execution of the power mad couple.
I read it in a few hours, only wishing the book were longer. Well written and researched, VAMPIRE NATION is a bloody feast for anyone drawn to the horror genre - and a comic delight for anyone interested in the real horrors of life under Communism, especially its mind-boggling version that played out so tragically in Romania. It helps knowing that, eventually, Nic and Elena hit such a bloody and ignomious end - because the Romania Sipos reveals would have otherwise required an invasion by George W. Yet the book isn't dated in the least.
Its funny, scary, romantic, revolting and - yes - thought provoking. Sipos loathes the erstwhile Western approach of cooperation and conciliation with the Iron Curtain countries (Romania retained its Most Favored Nation trading status right up til the end). Like Reagan and others, he was right.
Buy it, draw the drapes, hide under the duvet with a good flashlight - and let this natural tale-spinner pull you into a vortex so real and creepy that you'll need a bath in holy water once the bloody thing reaches its final, dripping climax.
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