Review of It's Hard to Be a Vampire

[Gina Rupert]

[Following is a volunteer review of "It's Hard to Be a Vampire" by Viktoria Faust.]

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3 out of 5 stars

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I rate It’s Hard to be a Vampire 3 out of 5 stars. As a collection of short stories, the writing felt disjointed and without a cohesive writing style or theme. Although all the stories were in the horror theme, the writing style and complexity of the stories varied greatly. While some of the stories were more enjoyable and some less so, overall the book was entertaining but not particularly well written. There were also some translation issues and/or typos in the work.

The first story was very simplistic and felt somewhat silly and childlike (although still a fun light read). The quality of the writing was mediocre and there was a lot of repetition of the same thoughts and ideas from the main character. This story was followed by “Gallery of Horrors”, which was a much darker story written in a very different style from the light fluff of the introductory title work. The only consistency in the writing was a noticeable amount of repetition in the thoughts and themes coming from the main character.

The most enjoyable story to read was “The Painting Strikes Back”. The story was a follow-up to the Gallery of Horrors in which the likeness of a painted woman becomes sentient and attempts to influence the outside world through a young boy who takes an interest in her portrait. The quality of writing in this story was generally the best and the plot was the most engaging in my opinion. The other stories were either too mundane or relied too heavily on shock value rather than engaging plot and characters.

Overall the collection of stories was a mediocre read and not something I would recommend to others. I suspect some of the stories would have read better in their original language, but as far as the English version of the work I was unimpressed and largely disinterested. I would like to see a better translation of the work released but the quality of the writing could certainly be improved as well.

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It's Hard to Be a Vampire
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