Secrets of the Vampire – Julie Légère, Elsa Whyte and Laura Pérez
The vampire as portrayed in media, particularly of western origin, of a very specific mythology with any deviations from that regarded merely as variations from that baseline expectation, the differences less important than the similarities, in fact the origins of vampires span the world with diverse cultural antecedents in which there are often common themes such as draining their victims of life energy, a belief which over time became focused on blood.
These mythologies given a broad but cursory overview in Secrets of the Vampire, written by Julie Légère and Elsa Whyte with elegantly sketched and shaded illustrations by Laura Pérez emphasising shadows though with details vague as though glimpsed through mist, they effectively convey the characters and concepts introduced in each chapter as layers of mythology accrete, some aspects becoming buried permanently as other trends persist and become dominant.
Written with the conceit that it is an actual vampire narrating the text, their recollections and musings leap from the ancient Mesopotamian goddesses Lilith and Lamashtu and their Greek brethren Lamia and Empusa through the ages to the present day with nocturnal visitations both familiar and obscure such as the Slavic strigoi and the draugar of Norse traditions, the book in some ways as useful and entertaining to those learned in the lore as novices.
Principally aimed at the latter group and with a suggested reading age of nine to fourteen years old and bearing the subtitle A Supernatural Sourcebook of Our Legend and Lore, the brief page count of Secrets of the Vampire and the sheer breadth of the material to be covered discourages deep analysis or equivocation over nuances or interpretations but nevertheless manages to introduce interesting observations and analysis as the decades and centuries flash past.
The Black Death decimating Europe, religion offered false hope that prayer and piety would offer protection, and when that failed someone had to take the blame; by declaring witches the enemy the church shone a light on superstitions it had hoped would fade out if ignored, and from that over time evolved the vampire first as literary figure with Polidori, Le Fanu and Stoker and also the almost forgotten French author Marie Nizet, then with the early twentieth century came film, fixing an image that was previously only a malleable idea shaped by the mind of each reader.
Printed on heavy paper with a soft finish and exquisite end papers patterned with a bat and skull motif, the body of Secrets of the Vampire ends abruptly to make way for appendices, the host never identified nor their reasons for having chosen to communicate this way, but while curtailed it is as comprehensive as a volume of this size can reasonably hope to be and will certainly be a item to keep in mind for bedtime reading after trick or treating as the nights grow dark once again.
Secrets of the Vampire is available now from Wide Eyes Editions
