Vampire Lovers! discussion

I was wondering what you all thought about books that use non-European vampires in their storied.

When I wrote Shine Like Thunder I used the Indian Bhutas for the vampires in the story. I simply wanted to explore a different type of vampire as a way to get away from a lot of the cliches of the vampire in modern fiction.

Do you know of any other books that have used other non-European vampire? I would love to hear about them, especially if they were good. I am always looking for a good vampire book.

There is the Japanese manga series "Vampire Hunter D", but I don't know if these are specifically supposed to be of Japanese descent (I just found out about a Japanese movie in which the main character is a samurai werewolf, but I haven't heard much else about it). There are many manga series about vampires (Hellsing, Chibi Vampire, Vampire Game for a few) but again, many times I feel like manga characters are not necessarily drawn as being of Japanese descent.

In Anne Rice's series, there are a couple of non-European vampires like Akasha (Egyptian). That's all I can think of! Indian vampires sound really cool.

I have a dvd that has an extra so you can learn the legends of vampires all around the world. They are mostly characterized as demons, but have vampire qualities. I love it when an author uses non europian vamps. It tells me that the author wants to be unique.