Title The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick Series --- Author Nancy Kilpatrick Cover Art Amy Land Publisher Mosaic Press - 2000 First Printing Mosaic Press - 2000 Category Anthology Warnings Explicit sex Main Characters See below Main Elements Vampires

• "Passion Play"
• "Theater of Cruelty"
• "Metadrama"
• "Dark Seduction"
• "The Game"
• "The Hungry Living Dead"
• "Vampire Lovers"
• "In Memory of..."
• "Memories of el Dia de los Muertos"
• "The Mountain Waits"
• "The Shaft"
• "Teaserama"
• "Virtual Unreality"
• "Farm Wife"
• "Root Cellar"
• "UV"
• "Sustenance"
• "I Am No Longer"
• "Leesville, LA"

In this collection of stories by Nancy Kilpatrick, Canada's Queen of the Undead, we are exposed to the secret world of vampires. These stories reflect the dark side of humanity including our desires for passion, longevity, power, creativity and control.

The first three stories are really one long one. As is often the case in anthologies for me, I wasn't impressed with the opening tales.

The next four were erotic as described but each had an interesting twist in the end that I can't go into without giving them away.

The three after involved a psychic vampire Oscar Wilde, a Mexian vampire coming on the Day of the Dead to feed off her descendants, and a monstrous creature which requires a yearly sacrifice to keep the village safe.

The next three seem to be grouped together as they are about vampires trying to make do in the modern world. Not sure I quite got The Shaft, though Teaserama amused me with the thought of a vampire getting enamoured with a movie celebrity like any human would, and the third showed a lack of understanding of VR actually works so I thought it was silly.

And the there is Farm Wife...ah...what do I even say about this one? Let's just say that is the most unique way of dealing with a vampire there ever was! I recommend that one just for the sheer bizarity of it.

Root Cellar hides a family secret, UV shows how far some of us will go for youth, and Sustenance is a disturbing case of Stockholm syndrome, although I didn't quite figure out who that other captive was (was it the nurse??). I Am No Longer involves native american vengeance and Leesville, LA is a very creepy side show.

On the whole, I didn't really get into any of the stories, guess that's why I didn't write too much about any of them. Then again some of the stories were really short, just a couple pages long. I've definitely read better vampire anthologies out there but there were a few that were very unique and unusual. But I was glad I borrowed it from the library rather than buying it myself, it was worth a read but not good enough to read again.