Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: Blood Rush by Jan Verplaetse, translated by Andy Brown

Blood Rush: The Dark History of a Vital Fluid by Jan Verplaetse, translated by Andy Brown

Reaktion Books, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-78914-196-2

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

The scariest of Halloween costumes usually involve blood spattered on clothing, dripping down faces, or leaking out of fatal wounds. Likewise, detailed written descriptions of bloody murders that really took place or seeing that blood flow in a horror film can easily inspire terror and revulsion. So, it makes perfect sense that Jan Verplaetse would want, as he says in the subtitle of Blood Rush, to write “The Dark History of a Vital Fluid.” However, Verplaetse‘s ends up offering odd tidbits of information only to leave the reader wondering where it will all lead.

The book begins with the usual descriptions of and explanations for pagan sacrifices and winds its way to Christian transubstantiation. Along the way, we are regaled with stories of Christians accused of cannibalism, Odysseus’ trip to Hades, and the belief that epileptics could be cured by drinking fresh blood, usually procured from executed criminals or gladiators. This ancient time period provides everything from the author’s thoughts on blood sausage and pudding to demonic blood drinking. The focus on bloodlust, something the author tells us he experienced, and blood vapor or mist as the essence of the life force establish the dark underpinning of human interest, even attraction to, blood.

In contrast, the rest of the book does not progress in a way that would suggest there has been a development or a series of changes in the way humans perceive blood, nor are the examples of people and events particularly interesting. Instead, Verplaetse jumps from religious relics, to toxic menstrual blood and public slaughterhouses. Suddenly, the book seems to be about violence and then blood sports and “barbaric masculinity.” Can people really smell blood? Verplaetse experiments with its impact on gamers and decides the answer is no. Are cows upset by blood? He decides they are actually upset by what they are experiencing not the blood itself. “Why do we derive pleasure from the horrific?” he queries after summarizing the plot of Stoker’s Dracula for us.

By the end of the book, the theme as stated in the title is lost. It seems as though the research led Verplaetse in other directions, yet he continued to move forward without showing how his new findings tied into his original thoughts. However, there is promise in other possible themes he mentions like “dark romanticism” or the impact of myth and superstition as they relate to blood. In this sense, Blood Rush does not fulfill its potential.

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

15 Years of Monster Librarian

It is hard to believe we’ve been doing this for fifteen years now. My husband Dylan, the original Monster Librarian, posted the first reviews on January 1, 2006, just three months (and a couple of days) after our first child was born, because what better time to take on a gigantic project than when you have a newborn.

He founded Monster Librarian because at the time, he was working an internship at a branch of the Indianapolis Public Library as part of completing his master’s degree in library science, and he found that the librarians there didn’t know anything about the horror genre past Stephen King and had no interest in putting in the effort to learn more about it. At the time, much of the horror fiction available was also being published only by small presses not listed in the databases of major wholesalers like Baker & Taylor, Follett, and Ingram. It required a commitment for librarians to seek out publishers and order individual titles, and the books could be expensive ( I was working as an elementary school library media specialist at the time, and Baker & Taylor provided a 40% discount. That’s a big deal for a small budget). As a longtime horror reader who started building his collection as a teenager by haunting his local used book store, the indifference the librarians had to the horror genre was something her felt he needed to do something about.

At the same time, I was working with elementary kids who were asking me for scary books while sitting on an awards committee for my state library association’s children’s choice award. The way that was supposed to work was that we read all nominated books, then met to choose a representative sample of 20 books that would cover all genres. The genre I had to fight for was horror. It went beyond indifference– some committee members actively disliked it. I had done research into reading engagement while working on my MLS and one thing Dylan and I both agreed on was how important it was to hook kids and teens with what researcher Stephen Krashen calls “home run books”. So many kids and teens get hooked through scary stories and horror that he felt it was important to reach librarians and advocate for the horror genre for readers. This was his passion and he posted reviews even after he became ill and through five years of painful migraines and chronic, life-imparing pain, until just before he died in 2014. I think he’d be delighted to see all the positive changes that have occurred in the horror genre and in librarians’ attitudes and knowledge of the horror genre and scary stories for kids since the site was founded in 2006.

I love seeing the diversity growing in the genre. There is still plenty of room for growth, but wow, things have changed a lot, and mostly for the better. I think Dylan would love to see it.

I would like to make sure we are providing useful information to you. Monster Librarian is an all-volunteer effort and I need to make sure we are at least covering our hosting costs and postage. That costs about $200 every year and we almost didn’t make it this year. Without your support, either through purchasing items through Monster Librarian’s store at Bookshop.org or contributing through Paypal, we will struggle to continue our work, and after this long at running the site, I’m not sure what I would do without it! Thanks for visiting, and I hope you’ll be back again soon!