Children of the Night

3.5 rounded up because it's Christmas. The opening 50-60 pages are glorious nightmarish look at Romania after the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu. Then comes the sciencey bits, attention to detail is A+ but it does go on a bit and for me it does spoil the pace of the book. Then the book morphs into some kind of 80s thriller and a love letter to the Dacia motorcar. BUT you have to give credit to Dan Simmons for doing something different with the Vampire story.

I'm not sure if Romania is really such country as Dan described. But anyway I liked explanation who are vampires and why they need blood.