Evil Vampire Novels: An evil vampire is good to find.

Evil vampire novels: a bad vampire is good to find.

I craved violence. I wanted bloodshed. I wanted my vampires’ undiluted, not Twilight sparkly, not main-streaming and gentle seeming. I wanted a vampire like Dracula, only easier to read. So like many vampire hunters before me, I went on a vampire hunt. Oh, I wasn’t out to stake them or “end them” eternally, I simply wanted the vicarious biting and ripping of other humans – all nicely cleaned up and presented between the pages of a book. Fun stuff, books.

It is harder to find evil, bad, ugly, un-humanized vampires on the page than on the screen these days. But when a person has a sincere desire to find mayhem, one way or another they usually can find some – even if the mayhem they find, and the protagonists might sometimes surprise them.

I was surprised that the evil-vampire series I actually liked best was written for children. A series of three short, but well written, novels, The Vampire Plagues by Sebastian Rook was published by Scholastic Books. The vampires here were sired by a Mayan God; Camazotz is suitably evil and creepy. The series features a street urchin, and a young man and his sister who together must battle the vampires, first in London, then in Paris and Mexico. The children are likeable and human, and the series holds together. Just in case you are thinking, “Child’s book = badly written or quick read” be warned, apart from the focus on child protagonists and lexical choices made for that audience, these books are simply remarkable.

Tom Holland with his tomes, Slave to my Thirst and Lord of the Dead is writing to a totally different audience. Brush off your patience, since they move very slowly and are presented very Bram Stokery, with diary entries, letters, and telegrams. Are they worth plodding through? Yes, if you like to spend a great deal of time with consummately presented small details. Best have the dictionary at your side unless you have a great vocabulary. There is lots of bloodshed, but (perhaps there is a gender issue here) I just didn’t care about the protagonist. When he eventually is vampirized, I say “Yippee, now maybe he’ll be interesting!”

Now I totally enjoyed the vampires of Mario Acevedo: in X rated bloodsucker and Nymphos of Rocky Flats. I like the lead character who spends his un-life atoning for mistakenly murdering an innocent family during war. He was a soldier in life, and is a soldier after death. This is what he is. But this is a world that I can understand. There are good vampires (try not to kill humans) and bad vampires (kill humans). This makes a complexity that is pleasurable.

Back in the old days, before I was vampire jaundiced by all the paranormal romances I read and watch, I was introduced to Miriam, (and survived!) in The Hunger by Whitley Streiber. She is as cold-blooded as I want my vampires to be when I’m in the mood for evil. She kills without thought…humans are just food, and not even genetically close to her own vampire race. She is the last of her kind, and while the reader should be happy that this remorseless killer race is being eradicated, I – at least – wasn’t. The novel tells Miriam’s story with enough pathos for the reader to feel sorry for her.

Bottomfeeder by B.H.Fingerman has a really nasty tempered and unlikeable vampire. It was recommended to me since it did receive good reviews. Ick. I found the Phil, the vampire, simply too whiny; if he were human and I had to go on a date with him, I would be climbing out the bathroom window to escape his company. At least the pain ends easily with a book – close it.

So when you are in the mood for the mindless eradication of the human race by a violent vampire, here is a list to start on. They should sate your bloodthirsty tendencies for a few days or weeks.