Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne (book review).
Before we got onto Flametree’s booklist, ‘Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies’ by Russ Thorne was on my list to look at. Oddly, it’s one of two books I expressed an interest in to them that I was told was out of print. The geek in me at least wanted to know how that happened to this book released in 2013 so pulled my own copy.
I’ve frequently commented with the other Flametree books about the lack of photographs when text refers to films and TV series. Here, there is an over-abundance of full page photos as well as some artwork. The emphasis is also with modern vampires as romantic figures and when you have the likes of ‘Twilight’ and ‘True Blood’ here in their heyday, it’s obvious why it sold out. I should also point out ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’ are included and without them, it would have been a harder sell to get more vampires on TV.
I did think there was an abundance of vampires in light colours but, at the other end of the book, there were at least ten paintings with darker colour choices to balance things out. Overall, there was an emphasis of mostly female vampires as attractive than dangerous but I suspect that can be put down to the ‘Twilight’ effect.
There’s a section at the end of the book in developing your own stories, plus a selection of links that might still be valid 8 years later that you might want to look up regarding vampire lore making for an interesting package.
From an age point of view I can understand why Flametree let this book go out of print but can’t see why they can’t do a more up-to-date revised version. After all, it isn’t as though vampires age in their appeal. Take a bite.
GF Willmetts
June 2021
(pub: Flametree, 2013. 128 page illustrated square hardback. Price: I pulled my copy for £ 8.00 (UK). ISBN: 978-0-85773-992-4)
check out website: www.flametreepublishing.com