Vampires

"Six original novellas by the modern masters of vampire fiction."
Anthologies are always difficult to review. Every author is different and every story is written in a different way.
Out of the six novellas here I personally liked two of them. They were well written and very sexy.
The other four were kind of... meh. One of them was more of a cops and robbers type story.
I'm sure that somebody who enjoys reading sexy vampire stories would enjoy this book. ( )

It was a good read, definitely different takes on vampires than are normal now. I'd say they're more traditional, but that doesn't really cover it. No explicit sex or gore, although there is plenty of action. Each story is excellent, with the exception of the last, the one by Tanith Lee. If you like her style of writing, it's probably a good one. As usual, I got bored with her word play about 1/3 of the way through. I found all the other stories intriguing, though. ( )

The Vampire Sextette is a collection of six novellasIt is edited by Marvin Kaye, and each story is from a different author. The entire book oozes with sex with surprisingly little violence. As far as a book of vampire stories, I thought it was rather weak. I will outline the individual stories below:

The first story, The Other Side of Midnight by Kim Newman, about a woman vampire private eye in Hollywood seemed a little promising but really turned into kind of a flop. There were some entertaining tidbits, like the story's take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The second story, Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Collins, was kind of on the same tread as the first, started good and ended as a flop. It was about a hooker human picking up guys for her Madame Vampire and the resulting ending with a poorly characterized vampire slayer. Apparently, this story would be better fitting if I knew the author's other books.
The third story, Sheena by Brian Stableford, was better fair. It is about a guy that falls for a goth girl with a pretty deep imagination. I think the characters were developed fairly well and I was actually sad with the ensuing death. It ran a little long and dry at times, though.
Fourth story, Vanilla Blood by S.P. Somtow, was written in a very clever way, in my opinion. It started with the narrator giving a backdrop while saying that reader knows all the background. Then it switches over to a court stenographer. I read this story to my wife outloud using voices and it was so over the top, it was at times hilarious. The dialogue, and there is only dialogue in this story, no narrative description, was great. This was an entertaining read.
The fifth story, In The Face of Death by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, was hardly a vampire story. It was, but only under the surface, as the main character was vampire only really in name. It takes place in 1850s San Francisco, the main character a wealthy Frenchwoman vampire hundreds of years old, falls in love with her banker, a well known Civil War office, William Tecumseh Sherman. They have an affair and she apparently drinks his blood, though it isn't terribly present in the writing. I liked this story, but it was more a dry romance than anything.
The fifth story, The Isle is Full of Noises by Tanith Lee, was at times ridiculous and frightening. It is actually of two stories, one of an author on an island, and the other the story she is writing. The vampire is a shapeshifter, though I won't give away anymore. As I said, at times the writing evoked some fairly scary moments, but the idea behind a lot of it was just kind of dumb.

There were at times I wanted to keep reading and others where I didn't really care to pick the book back up. It will pass the time and provide some entertainment, but if you have anything better to read, I'd skip this one. 3/5 rating. ( )