A Whisper of Blood: 18 Stories of Vampirism - Hardcover

Toothy follow-up to Datlow's first-rate Blood Is Not Enough (1988) anthology, which conjured up vampires who dine on sex, fear, love, anything but blood. Now, Omni's fiction editor calls on authors to explore the idea of vampirism itself--a challenge well met here. With no repeats, the current roster of writers still rivals its predecessor, with some of the brighter literary lights in the horror/sf fields on hand. Of the 18 contributions--each with an introduction by Datlow and an afterword by its author--15 are original, although the lead-off, Suzanne McKee Charnas's ``Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep'' (melancholic whimsy about an old Jewish woman-turned-vampire) fails to break new ground. More in touch with the overall spirit is the next story, Karl Edward Wagner's ``The Slug,'' a black-humored dig at philistines who intrude on artists- at-work; but the anthology really hits its stride with Barry N. Malzberg's bitingly bleak ``Folly for Three,'' as a husband and wife act out ever-more dangerous fantasies: ``Marriage as psychic vampirism,'' Malzberg notes in his afterword. ``The Impaler in Love''--a wry poem by Rick Wilber--follows, leading to the book's centerpiece, ``The Moose Church,'' a tantalizing selection from Jonathan Carroll's next novel, in which a vacationer to Sardinia dreams direly of the mysteries of death. Most of the subsequent tales (though not David J. Schow's preachy ``A Week in the Unlife'') also offer resonant chills, especially the final three: K.W. Jeter's shocking tale of vampiric fidelity, ``True Love''; Robert Holdstock and Gary Kilworth's neo-Victorian tale of a vampiric tree, ``The Ragthorn''; and Pat Cadigan's grisly vision of a deathless world, ``Home by the Sea.'' Other notables come from Thomas Ligotti, Thomas Tessier, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Admirably inventive variations on vampirism, although none can match the grim grandeur of the Count himself. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This consistently engrossing anthology of 18 stories is an extension of Datlow's first collection of vampire tales, Blood Is Not Enough . But for the most part the vampires here are not literal, and can be seen as a metaphor for negative relationships. In the bleak and Kafkaesque "Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?" by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, a secret government agency is deliberately draining one of its agents of his identity. Further distortions of normal relations appear in the wry tale "The Slug" by Edward Wagner, in which one university colleague impinges on another's jealousy guarded creative time--with macabre results. A novel form of bloodletting is viewed in "Warm Man" by Robert Silverberg, in which an enigmatic visitor to a small town exercises a sort of psychic vampirism when the residents inexplicably pour out their secrets to him. Those who like their vampires in the traditional mold will take to Rose Blum in "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" by Suzy McKee Charnas. Rose has just died, but is willing to try anything to be able to stick around for a while longer. Ranging from the grotesque to the pleasantly lurid, these tales are of unvaryingly high quality. Readers looking for shock and horror will be gratified; those who want fangs in the neck, however, must settle for tongue in cheek. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.