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Vampire Hunter's Handbook
In "The Demon Hunter's Handbook," Abelard Van Helsing gave readers an insight into the foul fiends and desperate creatures he had battled all his life. Closer inspection of the manuscript, written at the end of his life, revealed that within the text were seeded clues about a series of volumes he had been compiling throughout his years of demon pursuit. Van Helsing distributed these volumes far across the globe to prevent them falling into evil hands. His followers have interpreted the clues and unearthed the first of these specialist volumes - "The Vampire Hunter's Handbook" - in which he goes into excruciating detail about how to destroy this cursed race, the evil that first set him on the road to hunting demons.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 16, 2021
Great illustration and unique approach about the vampire origins. Must have for vampire fans!
January 14, 2012
Perhaps “cute” isn’t the word to use to describe this book considering it’s topic but it’s what keeps coming to hind. “Handy” might be another good one.
This is another one of my Barnes and Noble bargain bin finds that I saw and just had to grab. It was right before Halloween after all. It’s a Barnes and Noble novelty book published I’m guessing for the season, really written by Martin Howard and then labeled as being written by a Van Helsing. I love the camp of it all!
What I love most about it, though, is the take on vampires it has. I’m not a fan of the Nosferatu-type vampire that’s all sorts of ugly. I like me my sexy vampires with the heart of black. I believe in the whole “prey attracted to predators” thing and if a vampire looked like the dude on this cover, there’d have to be some serious mild-melding going on because that face would make a mother run away screaming.
And there is. Serious mind manipulation with these vampires. It touches on the whole vampires turning into mist and bats and such and plays it off as just really good mind games, that vampires can’t really do that but their control over you is so powerful that you’ll be convinced that’s what you saw.
These vampires are spawned from one Lord vampire created by the devil himself and there are hierarchies of vampires–from the lord to royals to nobles to vampires to slaves, the powers dwindling down the line as well at the freakish faces.
Some of the tools that the vampires use are also pretty inventive, including the neck tap. It’s a tight fine metal collar affixed around the victim’s next who's hung upside down, and it pierces his or her jugular. The piercing is attached to a small faucet that can be turned on and off at will and used as a sort of draught. Very inventive. I’d never seen anything like that before.
And while I wasn’t fond of the whole Bucky Beaver teeth that they had (the two front ones were elongated), I liked the fact that they acted as siphons and were, in fact, hollow with ports running straight into the throat via the sinus cavity. Very cool, especially the diagram.
It’s a fun book to have if you’re a vampire freak like me and the illustrations are amazing. I’d recommend buying it just for those, if nothing else. I’d really like to see this little world expanded though. It just touches on everything, including the journal that we’re supposed to be reading from. It leaves me wanting more and there wasn’t all that much to take to begin with, really. Just enough.
This is another one of my Barnes and Noble bargain bin finds that I saw and just had to grab. It was right before Halloween after all. It’s a Barnes and Noble novelty book published I’m guessing for the season, really written by Martin Howard and then labeled as being written by a Van Helsing. I love the camp of it all!
What I love most about it, though, is the take on vampires it has. I’m not a fan of the Nosferatu-type vampire that’s all sorts of ugly. I like me my sexy vampires with the heart of black. I believe in the whole “prey attracted to predators” thing and if a vampire looked like the dude on this cover, there’d have to be some serious mild-melding going on because that face would make a mother run away screaming.
And there is. Serious mind manipulation with these vampires. It touches on the whole vampires turning into mist and bats and such and plays it off as just really good mind games, that vampires can’t really do that but their control over you is so powerful that you’ll be convinced that’s what you saw.
These vampires are spawned from one Lord vampire created by the devil himself and there are hierarchies of vampires–from the lord to royals to nobles to vampires to slaves, the powers dwindling down the line as well at the freakish faces.
Some of the tools that the vampires use are also pretty inventive, including the neck tap. It’s a tight fine metal collar affixed around the victim’s next who's hung upside down, and it pierces his or her jugular. The piercing is attached to a small faucet that can be turned on and off at will and used as a sort of draught. Very inventive. I’d never seen anything like that before.
And while I wasn’t fond of the whole Bucky Beaver teeth that they had (the two front ones were elongated), I liked the fact that they acted as siphons and were, in fact, hollow with ports running straight into the throat via the sinus cavity. Very cool, especially the diagram.
It’s a fun book to have if you’re a vampire freak like me and the illustrations are amazing. I’d recommend buying it just for those, if nothing else. I’d really like to see this little world expanded though. It just touches on everything, including the journal that we’re supposed to be reading from. It leaves me wanting more and there wasn’t all that much to take to begin with, really. Just enough.
December 28, 2014
This book is a lot of fun and the illustrations are absolutely beautiful! The design and layout of the book works well with the tone of the writing and at times the experience even felt a little Lovecraftian. It is only a handbook though so the story is delivered as an overview of what happens and details of the world are given in snippets. It works okay as a format but I would have liked to see a little more characterization and some more interesting scenarios. If not for the illustrations I think I would have given this one star less.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews