Having tried American vampires in The Passage I thought I’d take a look at their Old World rivals: the vampires, shapeshifters, magicians and witches of Russia. (Also, I was away on holiday, and the place where we were staying had this book in its small library and there’s few things I enjoy more than the bibliodipity of thrown together book collections in out of the way places – there’s no telling what you might find there, since this is where books go to die. As many of the characters in the book are undead, it was all the more appropriate.)

So, how do these Russian vampires compare with their American counterparts? Considerably better personal hygiene and a marked tendency to break the action for long discourses on philosophy, in particular the emptiness at the core of human (and vampiric) experience. The American vampires just want to eat people. And, yes, the Russians drink more. Much more.

The Night Watch is much shorter than The Passage. There are more stories. The world does not end.

Go with the Russians!