Review of I, Vampire

by Michael Romkey

I, Vampire, reads like a young homosexuals erotic vampire fantasy, complete with every literary cliche known to the English language. The estrogen-soaked prose follows the story of a Chicago lawyer who deals with his parents’ refusal to allow him to become a concert pianist by getting addicted to cocaine. After his slutty wife leaves him, he sets up an elaborate suicide which he is miraculously saved from by a mysterious Russian ballerina. Tatiana turns out to be the daughter of the last Russian tsar, just one in a plethora of historical figures who are written into the story as vampires – including Mozart, Caesar Borgia, and Jack the Ripper (turn turns out to have additionally been an English prince before he was a mass-murderer) – which makes the book even more preposterous. Michael Romkey makes Anne Rice’s prose feel like Hemmingway. I, Vampire, is the single most self-indulgent, melodramatic, and whiney vamp novel I’ve ever read, and yes, Romkey wrote a whole batch of them.