3 out of 4 stars
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I am typically not a huge fan of books that contain short stories but I decided to give this one a shot. Viktoria Faust, the “Croatian Queen” did not disappoint. Each of the nine stories: It’s Hard to be a Vampire, Gallery of Horrors, The Painting Strikes Back, Do Vampires Dream of Slaughtered Sheep?, Narcissus, Quietly They Rise from the Fog, Behind the Door, The Invisible Ink and That Bloody Useless Bloodless Body!, enters its own new realm of spooky horror.
It’s Hard to be a Vampire is the funniest story out of the group. It is a tale about a woman that desperately wants to become a vampire. She is unable to live out her dream because her vampire maker believes she is too fat.
Gallery of Horrors is about a starving artist that struggles to make a name for himself. In fact, most of his audience despises his early work until he finds his “muse,” the art of killing and painting the dead. The undertones of this story reminded me a little bit of Edgar Allen Poe. The Painting Strikes Back is the second part to Gallery of Horrors. In this tale, a painting of the artist’s wife comes to life and destroys one unlucky soul.
The premise of Do Vampires Dream of Slaughtered Sheep? is about an individual fighting his own inner demons. It is a deep tale about a vampire hunter that felt more vampire than human. His entire livelihood revolved around killing vampires, including the love of his life. The tale ends with his fleeting thoughts as he lies dying.
Narcissus was probably my second favorite short story in this book. The title pretty much sums up the plot. Two vain individuals meet on the way to a bar but one ends up dismembered in an alley. I re-read this story a few times and each time I arrived at a different conclusion as to what was really happening.
Quietly They Rise from the Fog is spooky with a psychological component. It is about a man that has lost two very important people in his life. He contemplates whether it is time to end his life and join the fog.
Behind the Door had a lot of action for such a short story. It is about a woman’s fight for survival but with a major plot twist. Who is the real enemy? Or the better question, what is it? Man, beast or woman?
The Invisible Ink stumped me a little bit. I read and re-read the story a few times and each time I had more and more unanswered questions and thoughts. The story is about a writer named Hana. She posed the question, “what happens to the ink in the pen when I leave it, when I’m not writing?” The logical answer is that the ink just dries but Hana doesn’t believe that. She wonders if somewhere out in the world there is invisible ink that finishes the stories and thoughts that a writer has.
That Bloody Useless Bloodless Body! kept me intrigued the most. It was about a showboating author that wrote books just to provoke others. He didn’t care about his fans until one showed up at his door. This fan changed his life forever.
I enjoyed every moment that I spent reading this book. Sure, I am a huge horror and spooky plot fanatic but what really hooked me was how much this book made me think. As you can tell from my review, I read some of these stories multiple times. Each time I re-read a story, I found myself diving deeper into the message the author was conveying. For example, while reading Narcissus, I wondered which character was really the villain or whether there really were two characters at all. If I was only able to use two words to sum up this book, I would use horror and thought-provoking. For these reasons, I rate this book a 3 out of 4. I was unable to give a perfect score because sometimes the stories were a little hard to follow until I read further into story.
I would recommend this book young adults and horror fans. There were some graphic and gory parts to some of the stories but nothing too extreme. I would not recommend this book to unimaginative readers because every story is filled with out-of-this world elements.
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It's Hard to Be a Vampire
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