Dark Angels Revealed: from Dark Rouges to Dark Romantics by Angela Grace is a fan guide for lovers of the “dark angel genre”. The book highlights forty of the most popular dark angels from books, movies and TV shows. Here’s the book cover copy:

The Ultimate Fan Guide to Dark Angels!

Dark Angels have a way of capturing the popular imagination. From Lestat of The Vampire Chronicles to Edward Cullen of the Twilight series to Count Dracula of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, fans are enraptured by heaven’s mysterious and misunderstood outcasts. Now comes the ultimate fan guide for lovers of the dark angel genre. Dark Angels Revealed dives into the lives of the most popular dark angels from novels, movies, and television including:

— The Cullen family from Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series

— Acheron of the best-selling Dark Hunter series

— Bill Compton of the hit television series True Blood

— Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

— Jean Claude from the acclaimed Anita Blake Vampire Hunter novels
Each entry is a revealing look into a dark angel’s strengths, weaknesses, and special powers. Even the most diehard fan will glean new insight into each character’s psyche, gifts, and personal demons. Brimming with photographs, key lines and scenes, and little known facts and trivia, this is the definitive insider’s guide to these incredible creatures.

This book’s identity and target audience is a hard one to figure out. Certainly, vampires have enjoyed a lot of recent popularity in movies and television as evidenced by the Twilight series books and movies and HBO’s hit show True Blood based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. The favorite characters that everyone seems to be lusting for, trend towards the newer younger and hipper vampires which are absolutely included here. It’s a bit puzzling though, to see entries that younger fans of the genre may have never heard of such as Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows (which ended before most readers were born) and Julian Luna from the short-lived Kindred series. In my view, the book is intended to appeal to nearly everyone while it’s likely to appeal only to a very small audience. Readers who want more details, trivia and images of Eric Northman will probably have zero interest in Count Orloff or Elizabeth Bathory. Speaking from personal experience, I rarely buy a book that I’ll only want to read one or two chapters.

As the title describes, the featured characters are not all vampires but are “heaven’s mysterious and misunderstood outcasts”. This results in an eclectic mix that is a less than cohesive collection. As for the “dark angel” genre, I’m not convinced that it really exists but who knows, maybe it will be the next big thing. I’ve been unable to find a definition other than the one provided by the author. I suppose she could be credited with defining it by publishing this book. I can’t say that I’d recommend this book because I don’t know who it’s target audience is.

Release Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN-10: 1592334571

Post from: Vampire Genre

Dark Angels Revealed by Angela Grace

Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

Ok so it’s not exactly about vampires but for once we are making an exception because some of these authors do write about vampires… just not in this book.

Published in October 2008 and just in time for Christmas orders, we have Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

New York Times bestselling authors Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur, and Carrie Vaughn—along with eleven other masters of the genre—offer all-new stories on werewolves and the holidays, a fresh variation on the concept that worked so well with birthdays and vampires in Many Bloody Returns.

The holidays can bring out the beast in anyone. They are particularly hard for lycanthropes. Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner have harvested the scariest, funniest and saddest werewolf tales by an outstanding pack of authors, best read by the light of a full moon with a silver bullet close at hand.

Whether wolfing down a holiday feast (use your imagination) or craving some hair of the dog on New Year’s morning, the werewolves in these frighteningly original stories will surprise, delight, amuse, and scare the pants off readers who love a little wolfsbane with their mistletoe.

Published 7th October 2008

Here’s a complete list of authors included:

Charlaine Harris, Toni L.P. Kelner, Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur, Carrie Vaughn, Donna Andrews, Dana Cameron, Karen Chance, Alan Gordon, Simon Green, JA Konrath, Nancy Pickard, Dana Stabenow, Rob Thurman and Kat Richardson.

Personally I’m looking forward to the Simon R Green* story and we’ll see about the rest. Some of these anthologies are just not that good, let’s face it, so until I’ve read it, let’s just leave it there shall we.

*Simon advised he had sold this short story almost a year ago so just shows how long these things take sometimes!