The Bloody Red Baron

Not bloody likely. Not when Dracula is helping the Kaiser and the German war machine during the Great War. We meet some old characters, like Kate Reed, Charles Beauregard, Dr. Moreau and, of course, Dracula. We also meet a few new characters, from reality and fiction, like the Red Baron himself, Edwin Winthrop (a new intelligence officer), Goring - who seems to pop up in a lot of 20th century fiction - go figure, Herbert West of Miskatonic, Mata Hari, Edgar Poe (who dropped his middle name), a Hungarian actor we all know and love, the elder Orlok and even the name of Langstrom of Gotham University is dropped at one point. He is from DC Comics. Plus hundreds of real or fictional soldiers, spies and fliers. As gripping and detailed as the first book, but it felt better made - I plowed through it with great speed. The story was tight, never slowed down, always on track. PERFECT. I look forward to buying the next book.

An excellent sequel to _Anno Dracula_: thirty years after the events of the original, vampires are fighting in the skies of Europe. Meanwhile a vampiric Edgar Poe is trying to write a biography of Manfred von Richthofen, and soldiers are dying in the mud and barbed wire of no-man's-land. This book has most of the same strengths and weaknesses as its predecessor (which isn't to say that Kim Newman has fallen into a rut - he hasn't - but you'll probably like this book as much or as little as you did the first one.) Newman mixes his own characters adroitly with real people - some far more unpleasant than Newman's vampires - and characters borrowed from other authors. I was disappointed not to see Genevieve Dieudonne return for this book, but any author willing to turn Biggles, Algy, Ginger and Bertie into vampires earns points for style. (Newman also makes them more like three-dimensional characters than they ever were under their original creator.)As with _Anno Dracula_, the ending comes too soon and too suddenly; Newman throws in a major catastrophe which makes many of the book's struggles and characters irrelevant, and then fails to follow up on that catastrophe. But even with that failing, this is one of the best vampire books out there (and certainly one of the most unusual.)

Vampire books are a dime a dozen, but Newman's work stands out in the field. He has a flair for writing, and a unique style that makes his books refreshing and different.

kim newman has created the finest vampire books since dracula.his respect to the traditions of vampire-building is examplary.his premise is fantastic,and in all,he creates a wonderfull tribute to the horror-adventure-science fiction writers of classic reputation.but sadly,modern readers don`t understand the inner neuances that make this novel great.BRAVO KIM NEWMAN!

I read the Bloody Red Baron First, and then ordered ANNO DRACULA, and found that both were excellent books, the sequal did stand alone, as well as the original. The Bloody Red Baron expounds upon certain characters, and you are immersed from the first paragraph, it is an awsome read, I highly recommend it.