I liked the look into vampire folklore & reports, it was interesting how the historical cases were different from the pop culture vampires of today. This book did a good job of keeping an interesting tone while reciting all the old stories and cases.

What do you envision when you hear the word vampire? Vampires of Lore: Traits and Modern Misconceptions is an exploration into the folkloric history regarding vampires and how far off the mark our modern Edward Cullen's can be from what they started out as. In this book you can explore the origin stories of vampires as well as some cross over between witches and werewolves.

The differences between modern vampires and folklore are quite interesting, as most of what we accept in current movies and/or TV shows have only a slight basis within folklore. This is very much a pet project of the author for which he's done quite a bit of research regarding the topic of vampires in relation to their folklore origins vs. modern assumptions. The author's sources are well documented within the end notes of each chapter if you so wish to research further. At some points within the novel it feels like the author is carrying on a casual conversation with you - the reader. I do appreciate the humor of the author as well as the chapters organized by topic.

This was honestly just a fun little read - it didn't take me very long to finish it. The superstitions of the past are quite intriguing while being quite frightening and gruesome. Fear of the unknown makes people do some WEIRD and sometimes atrocious things. I would suggest this book to fans of the supernatural, vampires, witches, werewolves, folklore and this would make a good read prior to Halloween. Thank you NetGalley and Schiffer Publishing for this short sweet treat of a read.

For those who enjoy horror, this is a well-researched book that uses pre 20th-century folklore from around the world to detail how the rules and traits of Vampires have been established.

A.P Sylvia avoids using Bram Stoker's Dracula and cinema as the main source of information for the book to establish how folklore has helped to establish popular culture's perception of the Vampire, from the various ways in which one is created to its aversion to sunlight and garlic as well as how to kill one. For example, a cat jumping over a corpse helps create a Vampire to a Russian soldier's story of sunlight 'killing' two vampires.

This is a quick read packed with a lot of information. Highly recommended.

An exploration of vampires through folklore, fiction/film/television while also using science to explain how these myths may have been thought up. Includes stories, folklore from all over the globe.

This was a highly interesting book, but I wish there was more to it. It’s only 128 pages long, and as I mentioned above, there is so much vampire lore out there that I think Sylvia could have bumped this up by at least a few hundred pages, easy. I mean, the information here is good, but there just wasn’t enough for me. I expected more. More information, and more in-depth explorations of the mythology.

For the $20 USD price tag, I want a hell of a lot more than 128 pages of information that is easy enough to find on the internet. I mean, I know you can find just about anything if you try hard enough, but I feel like I could have located the information contained within this book in under an hour. For the price of the book, I need it to feel like more of a challenge, you know? Like, maybe I either couldn’t have located all of this information easily on my own, or at least that I couldn’t make some of the connections the author made without a strong existing knowledge base.

Also, I don’t remember a single The Lost Boys call-out. I mean… wait… that isn’t a good reason to be mad. But it is what it is. Tell me how sweet mullets and shirtless dudes relate to the mythology, dammit! And what’s the Alex Winter connection?? (I kid) But really, the whole ‘sexy vampire’ bit is talked about, so… I guess in a roundabout way he did cover it.

This is A.P. Sylvia’s first book, so I do have high hopes that he’ll give us something with a little more “meat” in the future. You can keep up with him and what he’s got in the works on his blog.

Rating:

There’s good information here, but not a lot of it – because frankly, it’s too short. There aren’t enough pages to really cover even a fraction of the existing lore or modern media interpretations. I know you can’t cover everything on a topic as vast and ancient as vampires, but you could certainly work beyond 128 pages.

This book takes us through vampiric folklore around the world. I love vampires, but this book took me forever to get through for such a short book. The premise of it is very intriguing, but the execution is written like my undergrad papers. It had some interesting information, though, that I enjoyed learning and did not know!

I’m always a "sucker" for a nonfiction analysis of vampire lore. The author did quite a bit of research and, by listing his bibliography at the end of each chapter, reminded me why I still enjoy reading about vampires as an adult. I even made a note to check out a couple resources I had never heard about before reading this book. Overall, I loved the level of research and passion the author put into the creation of this book.

Vampires of Lore, Traits and Modern Misconceptions is a book I would have loved to have researched and written myself. Having not written it I'm glad A. P. Sylvia did! Gothic Horror has always been a favorite topic of mine. I love spooky things, I love Halloween, I love going on scary adventures and I love reading gothic horrors so when a book comes along that says lets read about the history of a titan of Gothic Horror, vampires, I was all in. Then the book said lets not just learn about the history but also, let us explore and learn about the Folklore from around the world that inspired these Gothic monsters, I got shivers. What takes this book to the next level is that Sylvia goes deep into history to find the true origins of this folklore and dispels misconceptions by using pre-twentieth-century sources that were available...and there is a large bibliography at the back! And what have I learned? I've learned that real vampires where bloated and “hideously flushed with color” and that sunlight only became lethal to them since 1920. There are many tales within the book and a personal favorite of mine is within the chapter about Stakes, where villagers simply put a stake into the ground above the grave so that if the occupant is a vampier it might save the villagers effort by staking itself when it attempts to arise. As with a lot of Folklore, vampires existed as a placebo because disease and death are easier to cope with if you have something to fight against. However, vampires are still believed to be around today, I liked how the book highlighted this up by using the 2004 Peter Toma case. Where in Marotinul de Sus, Romania, 6 villagers exhumed Toma's body believing him to be a vampire. I remember reading about this in the newspapers at the time.

Thank you to NetGalley and Schiffer Publishing Ltd for an Advanced Electronic Readers Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This is a great book for vampires lovers. I really liked the way the author went through all the aspects of vampires as we know of them today and discussed if they have any historical/folklore origin. It was interesting to see how the lore about them has involved and how some of the things we think we've always known about vampires aren't always from original folklore and actually come from other sources. This has obviously been very well researched, I appreciated that all sources are cited and I can find more information if I want. The only thing is, I wish that they could have gone into more depth about some things.

My thanks to Schiffer Publishing and Netgalley.
I am truly a sucker, "ha, ha" for vampire lore. I absolutely adore vampires. I can't help myself. It's a sickness. You could say that it's in my blood! Boo, hiss! That is a terrible pun!
I think this would be a great book for those who are curious about this myth. It's loaded with information from various countries. For me, it was all stuff I already knew.
That's not to say that this wasn't informative, because it was. But, if you're someone who has researched vampire myths and origins, then you already know this. Do not let this deter you though. It's a damned good book, and if I weren't such a nut for scary arsed vampires, then this would be new to me.
All in all. It's well written.

I received a free ARC of this book through Netgalley.

<i>Vampires of Lore</i> is an effort to ground the vampire myth in reality, by collating different apocryphal tales of suspected vampirism from around the world. A.P. Sylvia strikes a good balance of the conversational and the educational, and overall it's a quick read. The book is divided into sections by the supposed powers that belong to a vampire which make it concise and focused, as the danger is that a book like this would become sprawling and unwieldy.

On the whole, it's a good book to read if you're interested in learning more about the real-world origin of the vampire myth.

I read this book over Halloween and really enjoyed it. Would totally recommend for all of you horror and folklore fans. Made me feel a little bit like Giles from Buffy. A great addition to your shelves.

This book was exactly what I was in the mood for this close to Halloween. Well researched. There are chapters on every vampire cliché you can think of, from mirrors to their supernatural abilities.
There were a few illustrations, which were lovely, but I would have liked to see a few more to break up the large parts of text.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this ebook in exchange for an unbiased review.

Vampires of Lore is an engaging read. The book is nicely presented, with the discussion arranged by trait, making it easy to follow and allowing you to dip in and out of the book by topic, rather than reading straight through, if that's your preference. Is it groundbreaking? No. I've read other similar texts before, and anyone who's done any research into the folklore behind vampires isn't going to find anything new here. However, I do recommend it to fans of vampires in fiction who are unfamiliar with the folklore side of things, as it offers a compelling introduction to the field.

An interesting and well researched book, informative and engrossing.
I learned a lot and discovered myths, lores and legends about the vampire.
An excellent read, recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Vampires: their attributes are used everywhere in popular culture, from books to music and movies. But what were their original characteristics? And how has their portrayal changed through the centuries? How many different cultures have vampire myths?

These are only some of the questions you'll find answered in Vampires of Lore, a very interesting and informative book for everyone interested in the topic of vampires and the culture surrounding them. A recommended read.

What a timely read this proved to be taking place just a few days prior to Halloween. When we think of the word Vampire an immediate image comes to mind of a figure much influenced by Bram Stokers Dracula and the 1930's Universal Studios films but what basis is there to be found in folklore and history. This is not a long book and I was easily able to finish it in one sitting so engrossed was I by the writing style and content.

If you want to learn about how the Vampire developed into the modern cultural phenomenon that it became then this is certainly the book to read and you will also learn about the origins and authenticity of the various accompaniments and traits associated with the vampire. It was interesting to read for instance that bats really do have little basis regarding vampires in the folklore and purportedly real stories (most emanating from Eastern Europe) but garlic to warn them off does. Topics like how you become and kill a vampire are covered along with their appearance in literature. A most interesting read and perfect for this time of year.