It was 1985 and they were staying at their cabin in upstate New York. He was asleep in bed next to his wife, and their young son was tucked away in his bedroom down the hall. Suddenly, a noise jolted him awake. It was a whooshing sound. The sound of rustling clothes and people walking around on the carpet downstairs. Then, standing in the doorway across the room, he saw the most horrifying face he had ever seen in his life. In less than a second, it was on top of him, jet black eyes, slanted and malevolent, staring down on him from only a few inches away. He screamed his lungs out, screamed until his voice popped, screamed until he had no breath left to scream...no, wait. Wait. That was Whitley Strieber's other scary-as-fuck book Communion; a book about alien abduction that freaked me out so much as a kid that I still sometimes sleep with a small light on.

Whitley Strieber's new book, Lilith's Dream, isn't Communion, and it may not disturb you to the point of requiring counseling, or giving you post-traumatic stress disorder (and for this you may be glad). But Lilith's Dream will definitely haunt you and keep you awake at night, if only to keep you reading to the very last page. It's one hell of a good book.

Whitley entices you with dark humor and arouses your senses with one of the most seductive female vampires ever created. This is no flimsy Anne Rice story. As one Amazon.com reviewer put it, "Lilith is truly the Queen of Vampires, and could kick Akasha's butt any night of the week."

Whitley's vampires are woven into the very fabric of human history. They are tied to our myths, and even tied to the evolution of the human race. His vampires created us. We are their fodder, created for their appetites. And in this third book of a three-book trilogy (that began with the bestseller The Hunger) Lilith is one of the few remaining vampires on earth just awoken from a millennium long sleep in Egypt.

Expecting to hop a carriage ride to Cairo where she can fill her belly with sweet human blood and meet up with some of her own kind, she is shocked to see that the world has changed in the past thousand years. Not only is she unable to cope with our modern devices, like cell phones, cars, bathtubs and televisions, she is horrified to discover that her race is almost completely extinct, wiped out in part by CIA vampire-hunter Paul Ward, who himself is part vampire.

After stumbling her way to New York, starving and getting by on the only currency she knows - her profound beauty and sexuality - she comes in contact with Ian, Paul Ward's vampire son, the product of an affair Paul had with a female vampire, in the last book, before killing her.

Ian is now 17 and unaware that he's a vampire. He's also obsessed with sexy pop-starlet Leo Patterson, who is a vampire herself by way of being "blooded" some years before. The blooding not only turned her into a vampire, but also made her the greatest pop singing sensation on the planet, with unearthly beauty and talent. She now looks perpetually 18 and exudes sexuality (which is a far cry from her former cruise ship singing days).

Upon meeting in New York, Lilith and Leo immediately recognize each other for what they are, and soon join forces to kidnap Ian and turn him over to his true vampire nature. Their mission is clear - use Ian to help repopulate the earth with what they see as a new master race, part human, part vampire. Paul Ward seeks to save his son from this fate, and Lilith's Dream reaches a fever pitch as he chases them back to Egypt, and finally through the underground chambers beneath the great pyramids, where the true history of mankind is hidden in secret.

The extraordinary ending of Lilith's Dream is one that only the writer of Communion could dream up. It's haunting, it's sexy, and it takes vampire storytelling to a whole new level. Suggested by Amazon.com for the Bram Stoker award, and suggested for the same by us (though we don't even know what the award means, other than it has something to do with vampires).

Vampire Lover's Dream
©2002 Jeremy Fischer