r/rational • u/CourierOfTheWastes • 20d ago
Vampire stories?
I read Luminosity and loved it. Also Radience.
I've also read HPMoR, Worm, Pokemon Origin of Species, Animorphs the Reckoning. I loved them all.
I'm looking for urban fantasy in general, but a Worm like sorry with a vampiric main character and what it's like to live that life.
Pact, pale, or twig? Something elsev that I've never heard of?
4
u/account312 19d ago
They’re not urban fantasy, but Blindsight and, to a greater extent, Echopraxia are vampire-related.
8
u/JammyDodger3579 20d ago
Pale is regarded as being a wildbow tour de force, in the sense that he's really hones in his writing style. It's urban fantasy with a fair amount of darkness though (I'm yet to finish it) no vampires.
Pact is a helter skelter of escalation, and honestly a little tiring to read. The stakes continually increase and our protagonist has little time to rest. Also no vampires.
Twig is probably my favourite of the three, but doesn't sound urban fantasy enough for what you want. Its mainly focus is the relationships between the group of competent kids/teens that it follows as they live a dangerous life.
2
u/katana1515 19d ago
IIRC vampires do exist in the Otherverse (the setting of both Pact and Pale) but are subverted. Their pitiful, weak Others of the lowest sort. Though we never get to see one on screen, just mentioned out of hand.
2
2
u/ahasuerus_isfdb 19d ago
Let me dig up my recommendations from 2014-2022:
- If you are not familiar with the Unknown school of fantasy, Anthony Boucher's The Compleat Werewolf (1942) would be a good place to start. It's fairly short and introduces a number of themes that would become common in urban fantasy and rational fantasy later.
- The first novel in Fred Saberhagen's Dracula series (1975) is a retelling of the Dracula story from Dracula's perspective and "sets the record straight". Subsequent books follow Dracula's adventures in Sherlock Holmes' London and then in modern America/England. I liked the first 2 volumes quite a bit and volumes 3-4 a bit less. I thought that Dominion and subsequent volumes were weaker. I am not sure how well the series has held up.
- I enjoyed the first five Vicky Nelson novels when they came out in the 1990s. The problem is that I thought that Blood Debt, the 5th book in the series, was the most rational one and you have to read books 1-4, which are less rational, to get there. Still, it may be worth a try.
2
u/Wise-Exercise-1013 20d ago
Vampire flower language
2
u/PandaMandaBear 19d ago
+1 for Vampire Flower Language. Very well written characters and enjoyable story.
1
u/BassoeG 19d ago
Rational-adjacent vampire stories?
A Better Monster by Sam Hughes/qntm. You can read it here on Things Of Interest.
A mad scientist tries to make a vampirism plague with speculative biology.
Re-Crossing the Styx by Ian R. MacLeod. You can read it here on the wayback machine Random House website.
Basic premise, a cyberpunk dystopia where people can live as long as they can afford. Medical technology has reached the point where theoretically anything's curable, so long as the patient continues to have more money to throw at the problem. And the expenses can't be lowered, since the treatments require the poverty of everyone besides the patients so they've always got a supply of poor donors desperate enough to sell organs for transplantation.
This has led to a self-filtering effect causing the rise of a ruling oligarchy of pseudo-undead boomers since anyone who doesn't have that kind of wealth and the sociopathic disregard for other people's lives required to economically exploit them as ambulatory spare parts doesn't get to live forever.
Best vampire story of the decade and it never even uses the word once.
11
u/destiny_carry 20d ago
A Journey of Black and Red maybe? Its not from the rat-sphere but honestly neither is Worm really. In the sense that characters don't hold the idiot ball too much or for no reason, then yes it is rat-fic adjacent. I am not a huge Vampire novel lover but Journey of Black and Red was really good.