Item - Vampire Express

I clearly remember the day I bought Vampire Express at the grade school book fair. I was fascinated by all things vampire at the time and would buy any book that featured them. There were also quite a few quality, classic vampire films from the 80s, such as Fright Night and The Lost Boys. And who could resist a classic Hammer Films epic with Christopher Lee?

Vampire Express has a good mix of traditional vampire lore and original concepts. Zoltan and Carmilla are worthy villains, and the Bloodstone and portrait are the the powerful objects needed to defeat them.

The train setting is marvelous, just like any good James Bond film, or Agatha Christie murder mystery. There are many great characters to meet throughout your adventure: a flamboyant magician, a skeptical professor, vampire hunter Uncle Andrew, and Nina’s aunt Mrs. West. Gruesome settings and deaths abound. I was particularly traumatized by the spiders.

At one point the Blue pill / Red pill choice of the matrix is foreshadowed when the Romani wise woman offers you a crimson stone or emerald stone depending on whether you want to take a safe path or a dangerous path.

The artwork is delightfully creepy throughout the book. One of my favorites, this book gets 5 of 5 stars.

More reviews by auximenes

While this book isn't spectacularly original, it has decent writing and well-designed paths. Some things to watch out for are the magical painting (which is quite bizarre) and the various character names lifted from classic vampire fiction.

More reviews by Demian

Sorry. Not interested.

More reviews by Good

I was really looking forward to this one. I went looking for this at half price books and found Crypt of the Vampire instead, I really enjoyed that one so I ordered this in February, 2011. I prefer when they have numbered paragraphs over the ones that say turn to this page. This one goes by page. I also wasn't too happy with the many dialogs included between the characters. "Don't be so certain my dear," says Mrs. West. This kind of thing is all over the book. Other than that I thought it was really well written, but a bit too kiddy for me. Crypt of the Vampire feels a bit more for an older audience and I liked that aspect. Being on a spooky train going through the Carpathian mountains with bad vampires lurking in the corner is interesting to me. If you like lots of characters to team up with, this book has it. I really liked the magical necklace, but the magical painting was a disappointment. If they took it out of the frame and slapped it on a special shield that would have been much better. There's a few creative wild endings that you don't want to miss, such as: Your room and the beach. I liked that there are two vampires, Count Zoltan and Countess Carmilla.

More reviews by knifebat

The first printing of the book has the following errors:

page 34 - should go to page 17
page 61 - should go to page 87
page 63 - should go to page 80
page 82 - choice one should go to page 16
page 91 - choice page numbers are reversed: choice one should go to page 6, choice two should go to page 50
page 103 - choice two should go to page 81

These errors were not all fixed at once -- some later printings still contain some errors while fixing others. Eventually, all problems were solved, and there are copies of the book out there with no problems.