I have strong opinions about every story in this collection but i have no room. I took a half star out for some stories being repetitious, but I regard this as one of the best anthologies I've read. ( )

I have strong opinions about every story in this collection but i have no room. I took a half star out for some stories being repetitious, but I regard this as one of the best anthologies I've read. ( )

Some fun stories in this collection, some of which have been very hard to track down due to reprint rarities. I was very happy to find some old pulp authors I love like Carl Jacobi and Fredric Brown and Manley Wade Wellman herein.

Still, for writers of horror or dark fantasy, the greatest strength of this book could be its 111 page bibliography of every published vampire fiction short story or novel or collection. It does note that the bibliography doesn't include comic books, games, television, plays, or movies (which is a fair decision for a book on vampire tales, not total media). Even so, it's a great resource that's made me start hunting down a copy once this one goes back to the library. ( )

This book is just what it ought to be -- great, varied, and complete without being boringly exhaustive. It's a good mix of classic and modern writers, each given a brief but informative introduction at the beginning of his or her story.

Some of the stories won't make sense unless you know some legends about vampires that have dropped out of common knowledge. It used to be thought, for instance, that suicide was a direct path to vampirehood.

This collection also has a few stories from an early twentieth-century fad for psychic detectives -- Sherlock Holmes with magical powers. Not great literature, but good clean fun.

Every possible variety of vampire is represented here, and the stories are arranged by category rather than chronologically, which keeps the collection lively.

I read this via audiobook. There are several narrators, all very good and carefully chosen to suit each story -- no American women reading stories told by British men or vice versa.

If you don't already love vampires, this isn't the book that will convert you -- though I dare anyone not to be intrigued and disturbed by Gahan Wilson's "The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be," or Mary A. Turzillo's "When Gretchen Was Human." I think my favorite, though, is Tanith Lee's "Bite-Me-Not, or Fleur de Fur." ( )

The Vampire Archive is billed as the most complete, most evil collection of vampire stories. Is it? Well, yeah, it's a pretty good survey of the literature. It's also got some pretty evil vampires. At nearly 1100 pages, it's hard to see how more would be possible - or better. Otto Penzler's done a great job of selecting good stories from well before Stoker until today, from well known authors to some forgotten classics. I expect I'll be going back to this volume for years to come. ( )