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A review by marginaliant
Blood Is Not Enough: 17 Stories of Vampirism by Ellen Datlow
3.0
I never know what to expect when I borrow books off my mom's bookshelf, but this one has been sitting in my room for ages because it looks so interesting and yet I just never had the time. Well, I made the fucking time. And here I am, essentially four or five hours later (though I read it mostly in chunks), kind of confused.
Yes, it is to be expected in an anthology that some of the works will be good and some will be bad. But that wasn't enough for Datlow. She had to pick some of the best of the best works of Vampiresque fiction, and then the worst of the worst. And by worst, I really do mean worst. Badly written, going on forever, boring, tedious, and predictable. And some were just icky. Not that I don't like gore, not at all, but some of the subject matter was just...eek. Like "Varicose Worms." Essentially about an abusive relationship narrated by a fuck-head and staring him and his future baby mama (he cares about this more than he does about her as a person. My inner/outer feminist rages with indignation, and the author doesn't even have the decency to write their relationship well. The shaman magic he uses is unclear and fuzzy, he has too many names and although the story drags on forever you never really grasp them, and there are no likable characters except for the sixty or so dogs who bark at him when he turns into a bear. Other honorable mentions of awful are "Return of the Dust Vampires," "Dirty Work", and "Good Kids", starring an insomniac doctor named Dr. Insomnia (no, really) and her patient a by-gone actor of shitty science fiction, a pathos-finder (I read all 36 pages of the confused pseudo-sci-fi mess and am still not entirely sure what that means), and a bunch of vampire-erotica-obsessed ten year olds ganging up on their babysitter Dracula, respectively. Just awful.
But then there are also moments of true brilliance. I thought "Lazarus," about the man who rose from the dead and sucked the life out of people just by looking at them, was clever and historical and vampiresque without being cliche. I thought "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes" has an excellent ending despite a slow beginning and works its way through some fascinating story elements before it reaches its conclusion. "The Sea Was As Wet As Wet Could Be" is now in my top ten short stories of all time, as it is short but not skimpy, clever and interesting, full of Alice in Wonderland references that aren't the mad hatter, the white rabbit, or mad old bats screaming about decapitation.
The thing you have to know about this collection is that Datlow's interpretation of what a vampire is is very, very broad. If you're a hard-core Bram Stoker fan and are stuck to your love of tall dark gentleman with sharp fangs and a brooding demeanor, you're probably not going to find what you're looking for in this book. Mostly the criteria for being a vampire seems to be that you suck something from another person. Either personality or humanity or blood or soul or whatever. If you suck something besides genitalia, you're probably in.
So, overall, I could take or leave this anthology. There is some very good, some truly abysmal, but perhaps something for everybody. Certainly not a bad inclusion to your vampire book reportorial if you find it in the 25cent bin at your local used bookstore, or on your mother's bookshelf.
Yes, it is to be expected in an anthology that some of the works will be good and some will be bad. But that wasn't enough for Datlow. She had to pick some of the best of the best works of Vampiresque fiction, and then the worst of the worst. And by worst, I really do mean worst. Badly written, going on forever, boring, tedious, and predictable. And some were just icky. Not that I don't like gore, not at all, but some of the subject matter was just...eek. Like "Varicose Worms." Essentially about an abusive relationship narrated by a fuck-head and staring him and his future baby mama (he cares about this more than he does about her as a person. My inner/outer feminist rages with indignation, and the author doesn't even have the decency to write their relationship well. The shaman magic he uses is unclear and fuzzy, he has too many names and although the story drags on forever you never really grasp them, and there are no likable characters except for the sixty or so dogs who bark at him when he turns into a bear. Other honorable mentions of awful are "Return of the Dust Vampires," "Dirty Work", and "Good Kids", starring an insomniac doctor named Dr. Insomnia (no, really) and her patient a by-gone actor of shitty science fiction, a pathos-finder (I read all 36 pages of the confused pseudo-sci-fi mess and am still not entirely sure what that means), and a bunch of vampire-erotica-obsessed ten year olds ganging up on their babysitter Dracula, respectively. Just awful.
But then there are also moments of true brilliance. I thought "Lazarus," about the man who rose from the dead and sucked the life out of people just by looking at them, was clever and historical and vampiresque without being cliche. I thought "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes" has an excellent ending despite a slow beginning and works its way through some fascinating story elements before it reaches its conclusion. "The Sea Was As Wet As Wet Could Be" is now in my top ten short stories of all time, as it is short but not skimpy, clever and interesting, full of Alice in Wonderland references that aren't the mad hatter, the white rabbit, or mad old bats screaming about decapitation.
The thing you have to know about this collection is that Datlow's interpretation of what a vampire is is very, very broad. If you're a hard-core Bram Stoker fan and are stuck to your love of tall dark gentleman with sharp fangs and a brooding demeanor, you're probably not going to find what you're looking for in this book. Mostly the criteria for being a vampire seems to be that you suck something from another person. Either personality or humanity or blood or soul or whatever. If you suck something besides genitalia, you're probably in.
So, overall, I could take or leave this anthology. There is some very good, some truly abysmal, but perhaps something for everybody. Certainly not a bad inclusion to your vampire book reportorial if you find it in the 25cent bin at your local used bookstore, or on your mother's bookshelf.