The Vampire Stalker (review)

In van Diepen’s fictional world, the pinnacle of teen girl fan culture is occupied not by the Twilight saga but by The Mists of Otherworld, the tale of an alternate Chicago where the vampire incursion froze technological progress around the 1920s. James and Hannah, Otherworld’s star-crossed human/vampire couple who are attempting to forge peace between the species, are most readers’ favorite characters, but super-fan Amy is completely in love with James’ brother Alexander, an angsty vampire hunter. The twist? It turns out that the author of the Otherworld series wasn’t just inspired, she was actually subconsciously picking up on a real story from a parallel world. When Alexander accidentally chases the most dangerous of all his vampire foes through a portal into Amy’s Chicago, he runs into Amy, who helps him figure out his unfamiliar surroundings and track his target. A lot of incident is shoehorned into the novel, from interludes surrounding Alexander’s adjustment to modern conveniences and social mores to a road trip with the school librarian (who worked on a degree in “literary physics” before being kicked out of academia for her radical—and, it seems, apparently correct—theories) to meet the flabbergasted author. The romance between Amy and Alexander is beyond unbelievable, and none of the characters evince much depth, with many of them simply conveniently placed to provide some needed plot point. Still, as a snappy, affectionate send-up of both vampire fandom and the Mary Sue phenomenon (in which fanfiction romantic interests are thinly disguised authorial avatars), this is quite fun, riffing on fan culture without dismissing what it means to its members. Vamp-lovers and vamp-haters alike may therefore want to be in on the joke.