Vampire Ventures is a narrative poetry book that goes through the life of Count Dracula and the people that he courts. I particularly enjoyed the college student’s point of view of being courted by Count Dracula. I think this book is very well written and very innovative. It does a very good job of not being a cliche– which admittedly is hard for vampire lore. This gives me the feeling Carmilla did in the best way possible, with a bit of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

Count Dracula is a complex character well written with much of his humanity shown, despite his otherworldliness. It was very smart to have “The Tale of the Vintner’s Daughter” as the first poem of the anthology, because readers get to take a look into ‘Count D’ and the feelings surrounding him, and how women tend to react towards him.

I really enjoy the breaks of form: the author switches between single stanza to prose to haiku, this breaks up the monotony of single stanza poetry in a delicious way. I do really enjoy the pages of short stories inside of the poetry, readers get to see a more in depth version of ‘Count D’. I particularly liked the short story “Dating the Undead”. This almost irreverent short story brings a lot of humor to what before has been a dark subject. My favorite poem of the anthology is in the same vein, “An Ideal Lost in Night-Mists”. It's like a better Vampire Diaries– very nostalgic to me.

Overall, I loved this book. It is very creative, it is new and fresh. I recommend anyone getting tired with the monotony of poetry and romance books to check this short story out. This will break your slump.