Witty, intelligent and action packed! This novel is anything but the boring played out vampire stereotypes found in most vampire based novels. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll laugh some more and you'll hope someone beats the bad guys with their own body parts (and someone does!).

I personally enjoyed the numerous references and mockery of popular vampire culture. How can you NOT love a novel with lines like this: "Perhaps she did not know that she was supposed to bay at the moo, or perform some sort of necromantic rite. Maybe you were supposed to get a manual or something; 'Lestat's Complete Guide to Immortality and Jugular Rending'."

Buy this book! And bug his publishers to get moving on the second installment, hell and why not the third and fourth.

GOTHVAMP.CO.UK
Vampyra wrote:

This is one amazing story. Rhys eloquently introduces characters in short bursts, feeding the reader with snapshot images and leaving you wanting to find out more. I was slightly preturbed at reading a book with no chapters at first - but trust me, within a dozen pages you see why they don't need to be there. There are several main and very strong cxharacters in this book. Firstly you have Cameron - lost and wayward and in need of TLC. Next, Gillian, a studious and virginal female, straight-laced and rather argumentative. Next the clown-like Dan and his side-kick Cassandra, (I say side-kick, well she starts off like that). Finally the aged and wisened "Nutter" and the suprising Penny.

This vampire story is a roller-coaster ride through the hellish nightmare of resisting The Blood Lust, with a rather suprising ending.

Rhys works the story very well. The snapshots flow brilliantly and Rhys' use of ordinary characters in a normal setting work to great effect. I hope he won't be offended by my when I say he writes as well as J.K.Rowling. By this I mean the story entraps you from the first to last page. You can see everything in your minds eye - even the most complicated fight scenes, and you can truely empathise with each and every character - even The Count Zorga! I get the same feeling of excitment reading it as I did with all the Harry Potter books.

The humour is hilarious! I laughed out loud on many occasions and some of the most simple of jokes brought so much life to the story. I could also see this book as a film. Every detail has been thought of by Rhys and would be a scriptwriter's dream.

The story itself is, to me, about meeting dramatic and life-changing challenges head on and not just shying away and being swept along with the crowd. Each of the characters grow, emotionally, and learn some hard truths about each other and their own lives. But even in the face of adversity, they still persist being themselves. They evolve rather than change and this is something many stories lack, which is a shame.

If you read only one book this year; read BloodLust by Rhys Wilcox and you will not be disappointed. It knocks spots off of Underworld and many comedy/horror films. It's addictive, you won't put it down til it's finished and it isn't a chore or a hard slog in the middle like some novels. It's in your face and at your neck!

Buy this book NOW, because part II is waiting to be released, and I'm already craving my next dose of BloodLust!

Take Care - and remember to let me know as soon as the next one is available!

It's written in a very similar style to the red dwarf books...with overtones of Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers series in terms of humour, and had me LITERALLY laughing out loud more than twice on every page...

It's about a group of students resisting vampire domination in their hometown...and the fact that two of them have become vampires themselves quite by accident...and superbly mixes a storyline about these vampires with PERFECT student-based humour...

I felt I could identify with practically EVERY character...the lifestyle...the comments...the scrapes that they get themselves into...the behaviour at parties/in the kitchen/watching TV shows...even one characters trait of permanently quoting 'relevant' film quotes for every possible situation...

I won't give away any more info than that at this stage...AS I UTTERLY INSIST THAT YOU BUY IT NOW!!!!!!!!

You won't be disappointed...in fact...I defy ANYONE not to roll around on the floor with laughter on every page as I did!!

The author has obviously taken his own experiences and humour of this social set and applied it to the most extraordinary circumstances, namely that the large British city of Leeds has become infested with vampires with a mentality similar to the Borg and led by a dodgy fella called Zorga.

The gang (Cameron, Gillian, Danny, Cassandra and Penny) meet up with the affectionately named "nutter" who is, lets say, a slightly less drippy but as corny Giles and proceed on their quest to rid Leeds of the bloodsucking types (who have this unexplainable urge to fuck all the time...).

Genius bits of silly humour; (...'John could tell the nurses were scared, they were as white as a white shirt washed in 'Wonda Whites NEW Whites, Wash washed whites so much better than the old Wonda Whites, we wonder what sort of wankers you were to buy the old stuff'....and 'He pulled the pin and lightly tossed the metal bomb into the centre of the room..........He reached the landing and shouted 'Fire in me Hole!'...'), which just had me rolling around poolside (which is not the prettiest of sights).

The story inevitably leads to the climax (as stories do) and a suitably silly ending. But hey, the whole books silly - so if you open it with that frame of mind then you wont be disappointed. English student humour may be lost on US readers, pretty much like Trainspotting might have been with you lot. Humour right on the (well, my) nail though.

Rhys, thanks for getting me out of my 'can´t finish a book' phase. Bloody fucking marvellous.

BUY THIS BLOODY BOOK!

Cameron's day starts badly and gets worse. All his worldly goods are repossessed and he ends up on the pavement in his boxers. Setting off for home, he considers it a good idea to get to his girl-friend in Leeds.

Gillian may just be the love of his life if only they had spent more than 23 days together in the year and a quarter since they started going out. Meeting a nutter on the way, Cameron finds out just what he believes in and things start to get even worse.

Over at the bank, John Settle is also having a really bad day, which only marginally improves when he gets killed by a vampire...

Taking revenge on his bank manager is just the beginning. Before long he has turned his family and all the vampires in Leeds are coming out of their coffins.

It gets to page 114 before Buffy even gets a name check but this comical and really very violent (only if you stop to think about it), book owes a lot to the hard-hitting, verbally adept, young lady of the night.

The novel draws on several sources and owes something to the humour of 'The Young Ones' and probably some later student stuff I don't know about. It also reminded me of 'Night Of The Living Dead' as these vampires are completely driven by hunger and become a mass mob.

The older 'B' movie legends also get a look in. Student life is made up of watching Australian soaps and going down the pub after the occasional lecture so having to save the world (Leeds, anyway) comes as a bit of a shock.

Playing with the vampire genre, Wilcox uses the old and new clichés to good effect and with a keen ear for dialogue creates some witty verbal exchanges between the characters. Superbly visual, this book cries out for a big budget film treatment as an antidote the dire hack and slash movies so favoured these days.

Mr Wilcox has combined much comedy and horror and produced, well, a great, fast-paced comic-horror novel that demands a one sitting read. I couldn't put it down but I'm not sure about the population of Leeds.

BITE ME MAGAZINE
Arlene Russo wrote:

BOOKLORE.CO.UK
Nigel wrote:

BY EMAIL
Heather Wrote:
Nice I liked it, even though I don't like things of this nature.

Vampgirl Wrote:

At the beginning however I feel that more attention should have been asserted to the description of the characters, especially Cameron who is the main fighter of evil. I didn't feel like I could really understand or see him very well. This is however a personal affirmation for me; I love to be able to know the minute details about characters through lengthy description but this book didn't provide it. However it definitely makes up for that with the hilarity and the seeming 'realness' about the situation. The thing that kept me going through this book, past the first few chapters where I was a little confused, was the way Rhys set out the scenarios, places and conversation. It was all so real, and so believable that it made you wonder 'what if'.

As the book gets really going and you get used to the involuntary profanity and rudeness of some of the student dialogue and vampiric activities you really begin to enjoy the book, take it for what it is and stop trying to think that it should be something else. Page by page you begin to sympathise with the characters; especially Cameron and Gillian having turned themselves into vampires (a new form of vampires - very raw) by... well I'll let you read that for yourselves! The characters really start to gel and get used to their changed lives and with meeting their new friend 'Nutter' they realise that not all is as it seems. With shocks and revelations and gore and sex the book encompasses students and vampires excellently.

The storylines are backed up by the usually feats of fantasy that you normally attribute to Vampire stories but this particular novel takes it to the next level, proving that you certainly don't know everything about Vampires (even if you have watched all the films).

Blood Lust I feel is heading up a new genre of writing; throwing out all the old styles of writing, the procrastination and dull monologue. It's the type of book you'll read straight through loving it or you'll start reading then try to forget you ever started it. The book reminds me a lot of the Point Horror books I read when I was a child. In a sense it's totally different to, the PH books were full of descriptions and predicted monologues that you just tended to skip over. I thoroughly enjoyed nearly every page in this book (after I got into it).

As I said before though, it took me a few chapters to get into the book as I wasn't expecting to be dropped straight into it. It's certainly not what you expect but certainly everything you want. Despite the lack of character description the book is actually quite verbose. Rankin and Pratchett lovers ahoy there!

In conclusion I've decided that if you like horror, vampires, and can laugh easy, then this book is worth reading. It's taken vampires to the next level, not to mention the notion of vampire slaying. I'll certainly never miss a bus again ;)

If you've come here without frames, start HERE.

Bite Me Magazine Blood Lust Rhys Wilcox Leeds has been overrun by vampires. Not suave tuxedo wearing ones either, as most of them seem to have graduated from the night of the living dead school of horror. Into this comes Cameron, who turns up on his girlfriend's doorstep just in time to become part of the action and The Chosen one oh and die. No teen-queen Buffy-fest here the gang is more likely to be lager fuelled than soul searching this book grasps you by th ethroat from the word go and doesn't let go. Brutal, hysterically snigger inducing, graphic and to the point, Blood Lust is filled with pop culture references and the characters that seem relevant even in such an alternate reality. To add to the quote from his wife on his website Well, I managed to finish it I couldn't stop until I did. The Argus Crawley based writer Rhys Wilcox has come up with this odd piece of fiction about a vampire attack and invasion of, of all places, Leeds. I liked the idea. Leeds of all British cities should welcome a vampire invasion, along with Birmingham and Liverpool, if I had the power to order it so. So we get a great deal of shock/horror which fans of this genre will probably enjoy, as well as an ancient vampire hunter who will help defeat a diabolical plot. The heroes are five 20-somethings who combine their skills to rid the city of these twin-fanged monsters who are drinking Yorkshire blood and, presumably, getting high cholesterol from all that Yorkshire pudding fat. It is written ina bright andbreezy style with some comic moments and the usual gore-ridden action. Fans of Gothis horror comedy will probably love it. I didn't. Mike Howard.