First Published: 2019
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: Vampire . . . the word immediately conjures up bloodstained fangs, an aversion to sunlight, bats, garlic, and wooden stakes. These undead immortals have haunted our favorite books, television shows, and movies for decades. This exploration of a seemingly supernatural topic delves into past traditions around the world and how those traditions have affected our pop-culture modern-day monster. Explore belief systems as well as origins of various notions we all seem to have about vampires, and unearth the bloody dirt about this mystical creature. Discover differences and similarities between the realm of folklore and what modern media has taught us. Did villagers really use wooden stakes, garlic, and mirrors? What about vampires turning into bats or hypnotizing victims? Did they really cause disease, turn into dogs, and sleep in coffins? Topics are arranged by trait so that the reader can consider each characteristic before believing or dismissing it. So . . . if you're ready, let's hunt some vampires.
The review: There is a trepidation when facing a reference book sometimes. I have looked at them previously – especially ones driven by a desire by a publisher to tap into a pop culture area and where they seem to spend more attention on design (this is a nice hardback volume with fancy, glossy pages) than content – and found myself annoyed. Annoyed by lack of referencing, lack of indexing and, in some of the worst cases, errors by the bucket full.
So, lets cover off what this is about first before looking as to whether it addressed the standard gripes. Sylvia has set a task of examining tropes from the vampire genre (running on a vampire definition in chapter one of a restless corpse, corporeal and blood-drinker, but veering off-piste when there is something of interest to see) and comparing them to extant folklore to see whether those tropes/traits are from original sourcing or a media invention. The working definition established, the book is then split into a further 19 chapters each about a given trait (for example, sunlight has a chapter, as does garlic and mirrors respectively).
The splitting the chapters into trait might have made a lack of index forgivable – except he does index his work, happy days, and each chapter has end-note citations, and there is an overall bibliography. The writing is fairly chatty, but engaging for it, but I would say that the chapters are fairly short and there is certainly scope in some for expansion.
When it comes to accuracy I found (for the most part) that the author had examined relevant sources and was in the right ballpark. There were areas that possibly demanded deeper exploration – so, as a prime example, the conclusion was that a vampire’s ability to fly was from the media vampire and likely a twentieth-century invention (whilst acknowledging a couple of rare folkloric examples, one Russian and one Chinese). However, I would counter argue that flying is referenced in Pepopukin in Corsica (1826) and actively seen in Phantoms (1863). To give the author fair hearing their conclusion is stated to rest around “major vampire-themed works” but Alexandre Dumas père, it can be argued, must be deemed a major source and his Ruthven based stage-play contains stage notes that state, “Lord Ruthven first sits up—then rises completely and having shaken his hair to the wind, he deploys great wings and flies off.” However – having said that (and if the author ever does a 2nd edition I hope they consider the works I have mentioned) this was an incredibly rare moment where I disagreed with the conclusion on an error of fact (or perhaps parameter). For the main this showed a diligence in research exemplified by the marvellous find of a brief reference to the, so-called, Vampire of Snowdon – a tantalising moment from 1890.
So, it is a light volume – it took a day to read – but written in a very readable style and, whilst I believe there was plenty of room for expansion, as a primer for the division between folklore and media this does the job well. 7.5 out of 10.
In Hardback @ Amazon US
In Hardback @ Amazon UK
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