Reviews for Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth - Wayne B. Bartlett - Hardcover

The average rating for Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth - Wayne B. Bartlett - Hardcover based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-04 00:00:00 Shellina Rush Even for Halloween, this one is not really worth reading, unless you're a real fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Although one of the co-authors is described as a "Romanian philologist", the "history and myth" is taken entirely from secondary sources, primarily Montague Summers, and The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. The book is not so much concerned with the history of the vampire myth in itself as in identifying the sources for certain themes and traits of modern vampire fiction and film, with long discussions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, LeFanu's Carmilla, Tieck's "Wake Not the Dead", Rice's Interview with a Vampire, and especially the aforementioned Buffy, as well as several film versions. (The book was written before the Twilight series.) Even taking this into account, the analysis of the fascination with vampires is rather superficial, mainly cliches about fear of the other and fear of death, with no attention paid to historical specifics (they never ask, why are vampires popular at some times rather than others?) Some of the ideas in the book were interesting, but not developed in any depth.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-04 00:00:00 Thomas Nixon This book showed me most of the vampire stuff that I already knew but there was a few new things that I did learn while reading. I like how the authors gave meanings to words that was tricky to read. The book also has some historistic people in the vampire history that some believers think are still vampires. I have read more informational books about the vampire myth and history that is written. I learned that some people believe they are vampires because they have mental or physical illnesses. To be honest, the books and movies or Twilight are wrong on some many levels that do not follow the traditional vampire lore. For example, Vampires aren’t sparkly in the day light. They mostly use umbrellas and objects like sunscreen or don’t go out in the daylight. I think I know more about vampires than anything else. I would recommend this book to people who like to learn about vampires. The myth and history behind the legend of the vampire is a great fascinating thing to read and learn about. This book had made me look back on a few other books that I have read over the years with vampires in them. The book also talks about the vampire community that is around the world. I like how they explain everything about the myth to the horrifying first vampire that was discovered.