I simply couldn't get enough of Katheryn Harkup's fascinating, sparkling and erudite account of the history of the vampire. Using actual accounts she demonstrates how the vampire myth spread like a contagion - gossip and rumour mixed with a very modern taste for sensation. How every country and region has its own particularly variety of the blood-sucker, from the upior and the vrykolas to the Romanian Striogi. And how this area of the world became a melting pot for the superstitions that would give birth to Dracula. She takes us through the endlessly shifting criteria - the Rules of the Beast, as it were - which govern the existence of the vampire: shape-shifting, sunlight and the primary importance of blood itself. She also examines in detail the physical processes of decay and how their misinterpretation could lead the credulous to believe their dear-departed were not so departed after all. As compulsively readable as a bloated undead feasting on a fresh corpse, this is an absolute must for all children of the night out there. The blood is the life!.