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The True History of the Fallen Ones
By Archibald Brooks
Edited by Nick Holt
Edited by Nick Holt
Candlewick Press, 2010
$19.99, ages 9-12, 30 pages.
Vampires are lurking everywhere and unless you take heed, you may be cursed with bloodthirst for all eternity, the late Archibald Brooks warns in this entrancing visual guide to dealing with the undead.
As you flip through the pages of the album-size scrapbook, scholar Brooks provides everything you need to evade the curse of the Fallen Ones, including tips to detect vampires and protect yourself from their deadly charms.
Above all else, Brooks writes, don't be fooled into believing the romantic stories you've read from Bram Stoker and his ilk about vampires, for these fanged creatures are more than a glamorous fiction.
They have insinuated themselves in every corner of society and, if they want to, they can wipe out humankind forever. For now, they've refrained from doing so, but only because they need our positive energy as much as our blood.
"�the more they can corrupt human energy into something wicked, the more powerful they become, for it is from destruction of our essential humanity that they derive strength," Brooks explains. "�we are their playthings as much as their food."
Sadly, our Brooks was murdered at the British Museum on May 12, 1920, two decades after writing the book. We can all be grateful that he had the foresight to hide it in a museum cupboard, and leave instructions with his trusted friend, detective Joshua Kraik, to guard his research and take up the call of "Protector."
A Protector is a person of courage and intellect who takes on the fight to defeat the Fallen Ones. If the Protector's life is threatened, he chooses another human to take up the mantel, and as the books opens, we read the last letters Brooks would ever write, in which he beseeches Kraik to be the next vampire slayer.
Filled with scintillating details, Brooks's make-believe book is both a guide to survival and a call to readers everywhere to take up the call of vampire slayer. "Be certain," he warns, "this is not a child's game. It is a war, and we face the enemy's heavy assault dressed in our human weakness."