I bought this collection mostly for the short stories, and it is probably a good thing that that was my motivation, since the rest of it is quite lacking. Most of the art is stuff that can be seen in other VHD works, and typically in color, whereas these are black and white reproductions that are sometimes grainy and poor quality. The advertised "behind-the-scenes" info is three pages, plus very short (couple sentence) intros to the stories, and scattered throw-away comments in the dictionary.

The dictionary is about half the volume, and isn't particularly in-depth. With the popularity of modern internet fan sites, wikis, etc. it feels kind of out-dated. I suppose it could be a good reference for folks who are writing about the series, but most entries are really so brief that one would need to refer back to the original novel for anything but the most basic info. There are some nice background additions about Kikuchi's inspirations for some of the characters, but again, these are either obvious to readers/watchers of vampire fiction or very basic things that can be found in a Google search for a character's name.

However, I bought it on sale and the stories are good, which was my whole reason for buying this volume. I had read "Portrait of Yzobel" years ago in Coffin, Amano's art book but, if I recall correctly, it was translated by a different person. If so, I would be curious to compare that edition with Leahy's version. That tale and "Village in the Fog" were my favorites out of the 5 included.

Heading out as one of the starting books in the Otherworldly Bookbox

Removed from the Otherworldly bookbox.