fbpx
BooksFantasyIllustration

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne (book review).

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne

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.

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne
p8: © Larina Boyarskaya
p9: © Anna Marine

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.

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne
p77: © Christine Griffin

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.

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne
pp26 & 27: Courtesy of Photoshot

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.

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne
p24: © WEi-Zi
p25: © Marcus Jones

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.

Vampires: Fantasy Art, Fiction And The Movies (Gothic Dreams) by Russ Thorne
p99: © Anne Stokes

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

UncleGeoff

Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 21 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’ If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.