Product Description

Graduate student Ardeth Alexander is kidnapped, held hostage, and forced to nourish the vampire who shares her captivity, but she soon realizes that the vampire is her only hope for salvation. 35,000 first printing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1776827 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-03
• Released on: 1994-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover

From Publishers Weekly
While taking an early-morning walk through the streets of contemporary Toronto, graduate student Ardeth Alexander is abducted by two men and taken to an isolated building, where she discovers to her horror that she has been brought to supply blood to an imprisoned vampire named Dimitri Rozokov. Baker's engrossing debut alternates the present-day story with the 1898 diary of obsessed businessman Ambrose Dale, who drove Rozokov into hiding and a 100-year sleep from which he awoke only to be captured by a sadist who keeps him in line with an ultrasound machine and makes pornographic snuff films of the hapless vampire feeding on prostitutes. Learning his story, Ardeth gradually loses her horror of Rozokov and begins to see their human jailers as the real monsters. Their only hope of salvation is to trace the links to Rozokov's Victorian nemesis and discover the person behind his 20th-century captivity. Modern subjects like AIDS and incest mingle with age-old vampire lore as the narrative moves toward a gruesome climax. In prose studded with passages of dark luster, Baker offers a truly original scenario.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Hired to research the history of a warehouse in Toronto, grad student Ardeth Alexander unknowingly becomes party to the capture of Rozokov, a vampire who had preyed on the city 100 years earlier. Ardeth is kidnapped to provide nourishment for Rozokov, who, aside from his taste for blood, is a charming, likable man--her captors, who are using him in snuff movies, are the true monsters here. Ardeth, knowing she will die in any case, has only one means of revenge: to become a vampire herself, release Rozokov, and kill their tormentors. It's hard to make vampires likable, especially when they kill innocent people (albeit apologetically), but first novelist Baker tries valiantly. Buy this for your horror fans.
- Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Debut fiction, vampire-style, set in and near Toronto. Graduate student Ardeth Alexander finds herself kidnapped and imprisoned with Dimitri Rosokov, a vampire who's recently awakened from a century's sleep and who is now hungry. Ardeth is his meal, periodically, while their captors film Rosokov killing prostitutes for snuff films. A bond arises between Ardeth and Dimitri, and she explains the modern world to him--he's been asleep a long time! She grows weaker but foresees that she too will be used in a snuff film and, like the dead prostitutes, be taken to the woods, have a stake driven through her heart and her head lopped off. How to survive? She asks Dimitri to do the full job on her and change her into the undead. He agrees, seemingly kills her, and when her ``dead'' body is taken to the woods, the gravedigger--at Dimitri's posthypnotic suggestion--fails to behead or stake Ardeth. She awakens underground, arises as a new being, and, as the two had planned, helps Dimitri escape. In Toronto, they separate and go underground while Ardeth learns the ropes about feeding and Dimitri accustoms himself to city life. But they're intent on vengeance against whoever hired the snuff-film team, and it turns out that that same person is still looking for them. That happens to be a wealthy woman with AIDS who needs Dimitri's blood both to live and to make millions with an AIDS cure--and even more millions by granting immortality... Enjoyable characters but narrowly focused story that doesn't advance the genre. May Baker take a bigger bite next time she feeds. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

an enjoyable vampire novel
This was an enjoyable vampire novel. Baker does a good job of building up an empathy with Ardith, the novel's central character. Via a set of nasty circumstances she goes from being a conventional-contientious student to a wild-child vampire and sets out for revenge on the people who did this to her. This is the last thing she had ever expected to happen to her - and would never have happened when she was "good". This is a novel I'm glad I've read and I'm looking forward to the sequel "blood and chrysanthemums".

Excellent Vampire Story
I am a collector of vampire novels, and after reading a few recommendations, I picked up Nancy Baker's "The Night Inside" (which by the way is also "Kiss of the Vampire)." Do not make the mistake of picking up both books like I did. It is the exact same story.

Ardeth is a graduate student living at college. She just finished a project with two of her friends (also graduate students). She is saddened when one of her friends and ex-lover dies, but that sadness also becomes wariness when the second person she was working on the project with also dies. Also, she felt at one point that she was being followed.

Her fears become reality, when while jogging on campus one morning, she is literally snatched by two men, thrown in a van, and knocked out. When Ardeth recovers she finds herself locked in a cell, with a vampire in another cell next door named Dimitri Rozokov. She finds out that she has been kidnapped to be his food source. She is terrified of the vampire, but as time passes, she realizes she is even more horrified by her sadistic kidnappers (who are making x-rated, snuff films for profit using the vampire).

As the days pass, Ardeth begins to see the vampire Dimitri as a person, and as they get closer, she realizes her and Dimitri will have to come up with a plan to outsmart the kidnappers. But just how far is she willing to go to live?

I don't want to give too much away, but this is an excellent, excellent story. I really enjoyed all of the characters. I would highly recommend.

(Also as this is an out of print book, you can find used copies on amazon.com and other used book sites. Definitely worth buying

good, dark, romantic Vamping
This is just an early version of Nancy Baker's Kiss of the Vampire. If you can't get this one, you should try the later version. Baker does a great job of showing the slow transition from meek, well-mannered human to vampirism. She really lets you get inside Ardith's head as she makes the transition.