Popular vampires post-Anne Rice

I was thinking about the plethora of vampire stories that has sprung up ever since the smash success of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, featuring the Vampire Lestat. Unfortunately, as I sit here and think about it, I can name only a few. Can anyone help me fill out this list?

  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: Angel, Spike, Darla, Drusilla, etc.
  • Twilight: Edward Cullen, etc.
  • Vampire Diaries: Stefan, Damon, etc.
  • Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter: Jean-Claude, etc.
  • Southern Vampire Mysteries/True Blood: Bill Compton, etc.

Any major ones I’m missing?

True Blood series?

Uh … that’s the last one on my list.

Ah, here’s another:

  • Underworld: Selene, Viktor, etc.

:smack:

I can read, I swear I can! You believe me don’t you?

Blade

PN Elrod’s Vampire Files and Jonathan Barrett, Gentleman Vampire series, she’s written some other vampire stories.

Vampires (and werewolves) and an important part of Gail Carrigger’s Parasol Protectorate books.

The several kinds of vampires in Jim Butcher’s Dresden novels are a major presence in the series.

Tanya Huff’s Blood books (Blood Price, etc) feature Henry Fitzroy, vampire and bastard son of Henry the VIII.

Barbara Hambly’s James Asher novels are about Asher’s interactions with vampires.

Vampire$ by John Steakley is about a group of Vatican sponsored vampire hunters.

The film series, but the character pre-dates Rice’s first book by 3 years.

Goodreads is your go-to for stuff like this.

Best Adult Vampire Books lists 426 titles.

Best Teen Vampire Fiction runs to 142 books.

The Best Adult Vampire Romance Books lists 558 books.

J. R. Ward’s The Black Dagger Brotherhood is 6 of the top 10.

And these aren’t complete lists. They’re really best of, more than 3.5 on a scale of 5.

No outsiders understand or appreciate how enormous paranormal romance has become. I’ve been saying for years that more paranormal romance titles are published than either science fiction or fantasy or both of them combined. Nobody in sf wants to believe me.

I thought that might be the case, but I didn’t check first.

Paranormal romance really isn’t a separate genre, it’s a sub-genre of fantasy. That’s the way I look at it anyway. Actually I can see it as a hybrid of romance and fantasy. Some of the books are more one or the other though.

Blade was a D-list Marvel character until his movies. Movies which might not have had a shot without the resurgence of vampire popularity. Blade is an interesting case as it was also the first post-Schumacher comic book movie to do well playing it straight.

Also add Being Human UK and US, Let the Right One In, and 30 Days of Night.

I haven’t read them all so I don’t know if she’s a recurring character, but there are vampires in the Dresden Chronicles.

There are no vampires in Twilight. Maybe you’re getting them mixed up with the angels?

Exapno Mapcase, did you really *have *to post that site? You now owe me the bunch of money I will have to spend on my Kindle. I hate you. :mad:
:wink:

If it makes you feel better I think he’s still a D list Marvel character. I liked the first movie though.

Hambly has also written about other sorts of vampires, but to tell which books contain them would be spoilers. So I won’t.

Most of the paranormal romance that I’ve read is more romance than SF/fantasy. That is, it’s mostly romance with some fantasy trappings. There would be no story (such as it is) without the romance, but you could use other genres and still have about the same story. Now, there are some good paranormal romances, and some good werewolf/vampire/supernatural critter stories out there, but a lot of what’s being put out under the label of paranormal romance is just potboiler writing, and when the next fad comes along, the writers will happily switch to the new fad if they can.

Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu are kinda, sorta vampires. As in - immortal and an infection caused by blood drinking & draining.

But if you think sparkly vampires are going too far…

From a literary point of view, certainly. But from a marketing point of view, it’s an entirely different category. It’s kept in a separate part of the bookstore, and readers of paranormal romance don’t usually read a lot of regular fantasy. And vice versa.

But from the number of books in the genre, it’s far more popular than fantasy or science fiction.

The problem is that the paranormal romance still have the romance part of it. My wife, who doesn’t like romance, reads some of them but has recommended only a few of them to me. (Bitsy the vampire Queen is the only one I can think of.) She just finished a different urban fantasy romance book and while the urban fantasy was okay, the romance formula can, and usually does, ruin it for her.

While I agree with EM, I also agree it’s a sub genre at best but doesn’t cross over, as the other two said. The point being that supernatural is the adjective and the romance part is still the focus of those books. That’s not bad! But it does mean they aren’t for me.

Of these, which would you identify as the most popular?