Vampire Nation

Rating:
Summary: A political vampire novel
Review: Brilliant satire. This is NOT JUST a vampire novel, in the same way that "Animal Farm" is NOT JUST a funny animal book. This gothic tale has our two vampire hunters (think of Zander and a really grown-up Buffy) taking on real-life dictator Nikolai Ceaucescu, here portrayed as the head bloodsucker of Roumania. Of course, the vampire tale is just the proverbial "spoonful of sugar" for the politics in the book, and occasionally, things begin to get a little heavy-handed. But Sipos doesn't let a reader's attention flag very long, because he knows people expect lots of vampires in a genre novel. In this, he doesn't disappoint -- the heroine doesn't get much time for speeches before the two of them are under attack again. The passages describing vampire depravity are made doubly chilling when set among the ruins of Roumania, which are described with an almost documentary flair. Part of the reason the two disparate elements of Vampire Nation work together so well is that Roumania is both a Communist wasteland and the homeland of Vlad Tepes, the real-life inspiration for Dracula. Author Thomas Sipos drew on his own childhood memory of the devastation of Roumania and turned it into a metaphor; in so doing he has created a vampire novel entirely on his own terms.

Rating:
Summary: A riveting, unique, superbly written horror novel
Review: Henry Willoughby is a young American who travels to Transylvania on business during the closing years of the Cold War when that remote and legend-haunted Eastern European nation was firmly under the dominance of the communists. There he discovers to his sudden horror that Communism is vampirism, and a man is better dead than undead! Inspired by author Thomas Sipos' childhood memories of Transylvania under communist control, Vampire Nation is a riveting, unique, superbly written horror novel which is very highly recommended for all fans of the vampire genre.

Rating:
Summary: Subtle it is not!
Review: The idea of this story is entertaining. The writing is just too bad. It does not suggest in a subtle way that communism is vampirism, it blatantly states it-over and over! I finished the book-I always do. However, I almost never get rid of a book once I have finished it. this one, though, I couldn't wait to finish and bring to the used bookstore.