Excellent poetry handbook. Where Paul Fussell does 'Poetic Meter and Poetic Form', Monaco and Briggs do metaphor.

This moves a little slower than the parsival books, but Monaco's almost as good as Zelazny at the 'poetic' description of sex, violence, and mysticism. . . if you think they connect. . .

Well, the title got me to buy the book, shame on me for falling for it. It's a good read, but the subject matter is serial killers, not vampires; not even so-called "historical vampires", and sometimes the serial killers don't even have a vampiric element to their crimes at all! The author attempts to imply that there's some sort of "dracula syndrome" but there's very little case for this. He doesn't even bother trying, I thought. I gave it 4 stars because even though it has little to do with the matter the title implies, it's still pretty interesting.

the author has written this book in a manner that while reading, it takes control of you, it casts a spell, its spine-chilling. wonderful!

If you're really into blood, guts, and sex, this one's for you. After 100 pages of this filth I threw the book into the trash compactor. Watching the "innocent" Parsival wandering around fondling and raping women and wallowing in blood was enought to make me vomit. If I could give this a negative rating, I would. Don't waste your time or money on this garbage.

This book makes poetry out of the muck and blood of everyday life; has three-dimension characters; epic scope, humor, love and magic and once you're into it you don't put it down.Up there with the classics of any genre. Unique.

This 4 volume set is easily some of the best writing I have come across. The images and prose of these books are very hallucenigenic, similar to the style Zelazny used in his Amber series. Shows the King Arthur legend in a different light. However these books are not for the squemish.