Young Blood is the best vampire novel after Carmilla and Dracula…the best MODERN vampire novel. Written by Brain Stableford, perpetrator of the abysmal Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires, Young Blood focuses on philosophy major and college freshman Anne, her boyfriend, biochem grad student Gil, and a vampire from the borderlands, Maldureve. Anne welcomes her relationship with Maldureve because his blood-drinking brings ecstasy and his teachings bring expanded perceptions. She’s perfectly willing to accept Maldureve’s reality, while Gil thinks Maldureve is a mental disease, a virus prompting him to horrible deeds. 

Is Maldureve real? Is he benign or malign? Stableford takes the story for some surprising twists and turns as his intelligent protagonists try to make sense of everything. In lucid prose, convincingly distinguished for different sections from Anne’s and Gil’s perspectives, Stableford creates a work as much about the nature of consciousness and all the selves inside us as it is about vampires. Young Blood is like a cross between The Doll Maker [innocent, intelligent ingenue comes of age] and The Duke in His Castle [small cast, intense focus, great psychological acuity, delicious allegory]. Unlike anything else I’ve read, it accurately captures the thrill, doubt, power and intoxication of creating, nourishing, talking to and learning about characters in one’s head.