Vampires

This book is 172 pages of whimsical nonsense, I really wish I had not wasted money and effort getting hold of this book.

The author, known only as 'Konstantinos' (most likely real name; Nigel) attempts to convince the reader that Vampires really exist. He claims to be a ' Dark Neopagen', whatever one of those is, as well as a 'practising occultist' for 15 years. Presumably he feels this qualifies him to write about Vampires with authority. In my humble opinion just because a man claims to worship satan, has long black hair, a photo of him on the back of the book looking moody and a made-up name he gave himself does not automatically mean he can be trusted to give you all the straight-laced, unbiased, scientific facts about the reality of Vampirism. He is far more likely to fill a book full of assumptions, half-cocked theories and stuff he just made up.

The book is full of confident statements about Vampires yet Konstantinos never feels the need to go into enough detail to explain where he got these 'facts' from and why its true. He just writes it and expects you to believe it using logic which has no logic to it. There are examples on almost every page. Konstantinos writes about the Sumarians, an ancient civilisation he claims believed in vampires; “because they were less technologically advanced than us they (Sumarians) were more 'open minded'” personally I prefer the terms 'ignorant' and 'superstitious' myself. He then goes on to say that the creatures the Sumerians believed in were “vampire-like creatures” so they didn't necessarily believe in vampires? What a shock!
He attempts to go even further adding; “Now that we've established, to some degree, that the Sumerians believed in Vampires” This was never established at any point. He just wrote it and we are expected to say “Oooh I never knew that”

He attempts to go even further with his own special brand of logic adding “If the Sumerians were able to create correct mathematical theorems using a different system of thought, then they might also have been right about other things, like their beliefs in Vampires” This is definately the flimsiest basis on which to argue the existence of blood-sucking, immortal creatures I have ever heard. He is essentially saying that just because the Sumerians could work out 2 plus 2 then they could be right about the existence of a mythical creature...oh deary me.

His sources of information are highly dubious, to give two examples of titles from the bibliography where Konstantinos got his facts from; “The Terror that Comes in the Night” and (this is my personal favourite) “Dracula was a woman: In Search of the Blood Countess of Transylvania” these sound more like trashy fiction than serious scientific material that prove the existence of vampires.

The only highpoint of the book for me was when Konstantinos included a letter written to him by a crazy person claiming to actually be a vampire...Priceless stuff!

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, perhaps there are actually people out there who genuinely believe vampires exist. To these people I say; maybe you will like this book. But to the rest of humanity that know vampires belong on the pages of Twilight Novels and not in any book wishing to be taken seriously I say: Stay well away from this book.

Verdict 1/5

By Chris