For the love of all that is holy, can Amazon add a Vampire filter that removes all books that mention the word Vampire? Would sure help out when browsing through the fantasy section a lot.

+1 on that idea!

 

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The vampire wave has been diminishing for a while now.

All of the authors tried to be original at the same time and all jumped to the werewolf bandwagon. Once they realized that was just as saturated they all leapt for similar other ideas. Now the genre is full of witches, necromancers, clairvoyants, demons, telepaths, etc.

Personally, I like the non-YA urban books and don't really care which creatures they choose to focus on. Books with vampires aren't inherently better or worse unless you just hate (or love) vampires.

 

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Yes no Vampires please lol....

 

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i love vampires. i always have. i don't like the twilight style though. eff that noise.

 

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Vampires are the lamest supernatural things ever.

What the hell? They are allergic to sunlight (in most peoples books anyway) and need to suck blood. Boring. I'm pretty sure they just got popular because most of the series featuring them over the past 5 years or so were written by romance authors and the whole sucking blood thing plays into the erotic "romance" theme they are used too.

That's not to say they were all bad, a few of them were pretty damn awesome. That said, most of them were pretty effing pathetic.

Were(anythings) are a close second in the pathetic list.

I'm a pretty big fan of Charles De Lint and his take on the supernatural in modern settings. His stuff is usually Celtic themed supernatural characters, don't ever remember a vampire or a were(anything) in any of his books or stories (though he does feature some skin walkers which is sorta close I guess)

Kim Harrison has a great series in the genre (The Hollows)...even if she did get her start writing Harlequin romance books. It has both vampires and werewolves in it....but manages not to suck despite their inclusion.

Got popular in the last 5 years? What?

Bram Stoker anyone?
Hell, even Ann Rice was 30ish years ago.

*Edit* Not sure why this is so hard for people to understand. People like vampires, not because of the kind of monster they are, but for the idea of immortality. Every single aspect of Vampires has changed over innumerable retellings, but the only thing that almost always stays the same (there are a few exceptions to this if I recall) is the immortality. The idea that you can so simply be given the power to live forever is very compelling to a lot of people. And as for the "recent 5 years" you need to understand that surges in vampire popularity happen every decade or two, it's not new. I remember in the 70s a massive wave of cheesy vampire flicks, then again in the 80s (Fright Night!), etc. etc. etc.

wtf ptilk? some vampires can go in the sunlight, turn into bats or a flock of bats, are immortal, have super strength and speed, can turn into mist, heal instantly, etc.. they're pretty awesome for a supernatural creature. esp since most of the time, they started out as humans. the one from league of extraordinary gentlemen was the most badass vampire ever. she was like stand back gentlemen, i'll handle this by killing everything in a 3 mile square radius in under 4 seconds.

 

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All that aside, the real life store of Vlad the Impaler is probably one of the coolest, if most twisted, real life histories/stories out there. I mean seriously, it would have to be to be the inspiration of generations of vampire stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_the_Impaler

i watched a show on natgeo about old school torture one halloween. they went through a whole bunch with pig bodies/parts to show how exactly they worked and what would happen etc.. like the stretching rack they assumed would just rip your joints apart, because that's the weakest link there. but instead, it would break you in the goddamn middle of your bones and crap in ways no one would have ever guessed. they also myth busted a bunch of old torture devices that are really popular today but totally didn't exist. stuff like the iron maiden. anyway, over half the show was dedicated to finding out how vlad could impale people and keep them alive. the truly horrific thing was how slow and methodical they had to be to get the rods from the anus up through the mouth w/o puncturing anything vital. it was possible to stay alive on the them until you died of exposure or thirst/starvation. and he did it to his own people to avoid fights in the first place. but like.. can you imagine getting knocked out (cuz it would be impossible to do that to someone awake. they'd fight so much they'd kill themselves on the spike.) and waking up and you're just ass to mouth impaled and alive and you can't do anything about it? worst. death. ever.

 

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