The Light at the End

The usual number of passengers were on board, doing their midnight ride; atrocity tends to attract as many people as it scares away.

Every vampire story is about the horror of real estate and wanting to dominate the market by converting people into your slaves, it's a good shortcut if you can pull it off. Anyhow, this book with one and a half dimentional characters and pretty decent action and gore sequences makes for a pretty fun read. It would be an excellent movie, though.

This was one of the many (many, many) vampire novels referenced in Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series. The main vamp from The Light at the End makes an appearance in Johnny Alucard. When I looked up the reference, I thought the book sounded interesting, so I checked it out. Glad I did! The story contains some not-so-PC words and attitudes, but I won’t judge it by 2017 standards when it was published in 1986. I’m sure I could find a lot of other books from that era and earlier with similar issues :(. And aside from that, I didn’t have any complaints about this book. It was a fun, fast read featuring an old-school, nasty, scary vampire and a straight-forward good-vs.-evil plot-line that I found very satisfying. It’s not for the show more faint of heart, though. Definitely a gory horror novel intended for adults! show less

A little too much gore for me, even if I liked the ideas presented in the novel. And some of the characters, both good and bad, will be staying with me for a long, long time.

Here’s a bunch of characters. Here’s a dozen more. And a dozen more. And another one, another one, another, another, another…

So it goes, for chapter after chapter, with new characters constantly being introduced at such a rapid pace that you quickly lose track of who’s who, and thus get no chance at developing any empathy towards any of them.

Additionally, the promise of so-called “splatterpunk” leaves gorehounds wanting. Simply put: there is barely any splatter what so ever! There are some quick glimpses of blood, sure. But it is all over too quickly without much attention to detail. I cannot believe this was somehow “shocking” to 80s readers, as any mention of guts and gore is so mild and innocent that it would barely show more qualify for a PG-13 rating. show less

This book is recognized as the first splatterpunk novel......its comedically light on gore compared to modern books in this genre. The 80s vibe is definitely strong....I could have identified this as an 80s era novel without ever learning the publication date lol!

It took me a little while to get into this one.....it gets much better around a third of the way through, when the entire feel of the story seems to shift a bit.

Overall... its a solid vampire story with just enough gore....I'd definitely recommend this for vampire and/ or horror aficionados alike.

A Gory, Dark, Vampire Tale

This book was recommended on several Vampire Reading Lists with the warning it was a darkly-told story. It was that and more - more gore! A spine-chilling adrenaline rush, especially the final Book 3. The writing was quite good for the most part, occasionally annoying in style. The 80's NYC setting was well done and the characters were well-defined. Rudy the Vampire was a real bad-ass. Very suspenseful, if you can stand the graphic scenes. I found it just this side of queasy-making, but then I haven't liked out and out "horror" since I was 25. An unsettling story and a good successor to Dracula.

i liked this twist on vampire mythology and presentation. as usual, Spector and Skipp please with disturbing twists and unsettling splatter. however, most of the characters were not believable, and the central vampire antagonist of the story was incredibly impotent to the point of being a colossal wimp, taking a lot away from the fright factor. still, there were enough unexpected twists and novel vampire characterizations to make this a fun read.