Blood Muse: Timeless Tales of Vampires in the Arts [Hardcover]

The stories in this book are of very uneven quality. A few of them appear to have been "phoned in" - someone told the author "vampires and the arts" and the author wrote any old thing that managed to mention a vampire and one of the arts and called it a story. Others have had some thought put into them.

Generally speaking, there are a couple of ways to divide up vampire stories. The vampires are evil, brooding creatures who live to prey on humanity, or the vampires are good guys who use their supernaturally long lives to try and help along lesser beings; that's one way to categorize stories. Another is, the vampires have strictly the powers and weaknesses attributed to them by legend, or the author has taken the vampire general outline and made individuals with varying characteristics. Do the vampires feed on human blood, or do they prey on emotions, life force, or other features of the human soul? Still another way to categorize vampire stories is whether they are a blatant analogy for sex (penetration, blood, you know, the whole breaking-the-maidenhead, women-as-prey thing) or are more subtle, with metaphors for gaining knowledge, other stuff besides sex. The downside of short stories is that, since there are space limitations, authors usually don't have the space to get away from the cliche' side of these dichotomies, and so in most of the stories in this book, vampires are strictly the creatures of legend, evil, brooding, killing human prey, sunlight-is-deadly, afraid of garlic, etc. - by taking those things for granted, the author has time to develop a plot, whereas if the author of a short story tries to make a vampire an individual, there's not much room left for anything else.

Other problems: in trying to get over 30 stories for the book, the editors stretched at authors; some are not familiar at all to readers of the fantasy/SF genre, and their writing is in a literary style that can be offputting.

OK, all that sounds rather negative, so let me point out a few things I did like in this book:
*"Fleadh de Deux" about an Irish vampire involved in the Irish traditional music scene, a different setting for a vampire! (Incidentally, several of the musical tales seem to feature flutes, which certainly adds to the thesis that many vampire stories are really about sex, since the flute is a pretty blatant phallic symbol.)
*The story featuring Bela Lugosi, who turns down eternal life when offered it by a real vampire.
*"Vamping the Muse" which features muses who are real little creatures who drink blood...
*Most of the stories in the "Special Exhibits" section, which includes things that don't fit into the main categories of art such as music, dancing, or writing. For example, "Man of the Dead" features the art of jewelry-making, and is set in China. And "Beat Surrender," featuring the art of graffiti murals.

All that said, in summary, I'd buy this one used or paperback, as I didn't think the overall quality of the stories was worth hardcover, permanent-addition-to-the-collection. But, if you are a serious everything-vampire collector, you may find it worthwhile. It certainly does contain stories you won't find elsewhere.

This book of short stories is truly fab-u-lous! I really enjoyed all of the stories, which is somewhat unusual in a compilation book. Vampires in the Arts may seem Cliche, but all the authors in this book give you a new twist to old tales or entirely new themes. I highly recommend this book for all Vampire lovers.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see both reviews  3.5 out of 5 stars