Quick review

I have to say, it is incredibly nice to have a book about vampires it is not 90% about Dracula and Anne Rice.  That's not to say that Dracula and Anne Rice aren't very important in vampire history and legend, but to be honest, if I'm going to the trouble of researching vampires, I would really like to learn about more than simply Dracula and Anne Rice is vampires.

Because of this, Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Dark Side by Brad Steiger  was rather refreshing.  Steiger does have an interesting thought on what "real" vampires, though; that they are parasitic spiritual force that will possess humans and give them vampiric tendencies such as drinking blood, or that they are demons, the children of Lilith, who drain people's blood or energy, thereby working at possessing their souls.

Overall the first 200 pages of the book gives some interesting insights, thoughts and ideas about vampires, the kind that are often difficult to get at in other books because of the focus on the "traditional" vampire in literature.  The end of the book becomes more difficult to read.  In places, the writing seems stilted, though it's possible that these stilted sections are accounts from others in their own words; Steiger doesn't always make these sections clear as to who the writer is, sometimes flipping back and forth between reports sent to him and his thoughts on them.  And at the very end of the book was something I really wasn't expecting, a section on extraterrestrial beings.  Sure, I suppose they could fit into the night stalkers or creatures from the dark side, but I was really not expecting to read about aliens in a book titled Real Vampires.

Still, despite these shortcomings in the end of the book, I am still glad I read it as it gave me ideas for my book.