Title Vikram and the Vampire: Or Tales of Hindu Devilry Series --- Author Sir Richard Francis Burton Cover Art --- Publisher --- First Printing 1870 Category Folklore Warnings None Main Characters Vikram Main Elements Vampires

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This book can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.

I had an unusual coincidence when it came to this book. See back in January, I had started the Burton & Swinburne series (which is very good). Little did I know that when October came around and I'm picking out a vampire tale for Halloween on my eReader (I had several from Project Gutenberg that I'd uploaded and every year I picked one) that I'd pick the one that was written by Sir Richard Francis Burton...the very character I'd started the year with, only of course this was the real one who doesn't actually time travel. The coincidence didn't end there since I also read Hide Me Among the Graves where Swinburne made an appearance, again, totally didn't do that on purpose!

Anyway back to Vikram...it was...long winded. To be fair I don't read my eReader consistently so it took me several months to get through. It was somewhat interesting, while also cringeworthy, but often boring. Of course the views on women were as little more than pretty broodmares...though I had to laugh at what they used to think were ways to describe a beautiful woman - she had a gait like an elephant, or her nose like a parrot - they were meant to be positives but it gave quite the mental image to a modern reader.

I don't blame Burton, he's really just the translator of tales he collected while exploring India. And the tales were about morals that have evolved over time. And like I said, it can take quite a while to get to the point, such that as the stories went along I found myself skimming and losing the details till I wasn't sure who was who and what was going on, but at same time didn't feel worth going back to re-read. The only tale that really got my attention was the last one where the vampire is describing the future where Europeans will come to India and contrasting those people with the locals.

Oh, and while the creature is called a vampire, and it does hang upside down from a tree, a better description would be demon. Unless the "blood" this vampire feeds on is someone's patience, as it was quite the irritating creature. Mind you, Vikram doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut, if he did he'd have (and us) only had to listen to one of the stories.