Vampyr Review – Not Enough Fire

Book no. 20 this year – The Vampyr by John William Polidori, a very small book that I was confident of finishing it in an hour, could I have been more wrong.

Published in 1819, the early 19th century English wasn’t easy to read in a single sitting.

It’s about a young rich dude called Aubrey, who befriends a mysterious guy called Lord Ruthven, only to learn he is a blood-sucker. A fact that he learns to late, leading to fatal consequences.

It wasn’t a fun reading experience, unlike ‘Carmilla’ another short Vampire book, which came out decades later and had all the elements of a classic gothic story. First off – I had to read a few sentences twice and concentrate more than usual to understand what’s going on. Which is fine by me, but the problem is, the story’s flow wasn’t very smooth. It felt more like an essay, with very few descriptions. Polidori was primarily a physician, so maybe prose wasn’t really his forte.

Except for the fact that Vampyr was path-breaking in the Vampire fiction genre due to the virtue of its early publication date, it’s not very impressive. I would give it a 2.5 on 5.