Children of the Night by Dan Simmons (First Edition)

In Romania to help treat rare blood ailments, hematologist Kate Neuman adopts a child whose body is capable of accepting any type of blood, and soon she is tracked by superhuman members of a Romanian underground

Count Dracula kicks off the coffin lid again in this updated vampire tale, ready to stalk through the rubble of post-Communist Europe. This time, however, the count's sanguinary tippling habits may hold the cure for both AIDS and cancer. The key lies with a Romanian orphan adopted by American hematologist Kate Neuman; the infant, Joshua, has a series of rare diseases, and can survive only because his body extracts and processes genetic material from blood transfusions. If the virus in his system responsible for this ability can be isolated, his diseases could be remedied and medical marvels would be within Kate's grasp. The drawback is that Joshua has inherited his talents from the decrepit but murderous Vlad Dracula, and this patriarch of an accursed clan of blood-drinkers is more interested in perpetuating his power than in providing miracle cures for the masses. Simmons ( Song of Kali ) makes Children 's fantastical scientific claims easy to swallow, although the medical jargon in some of the American scenes is thicker than Bela Lugosi's accent (try out "hypogammaglobulinemia"). Still, the book offers a mesmerizing tour through the ghostly, gray tatters of Romania.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Simmons (Summer of Night, Carrion Comfort, Song of Kali, etc.) slips into Bram Stoker/Anne Rice territory and writes his best novel ever. The title's children of the night are those frail, ravaged infants we see televised from Romanian orphanages. Is it bad taste to suck blood from those fly-covered kids to pump up a commercial horror novel? Well, Simmons puts them to such imaginative use that ghastliness disappears. It seems that the late dictator Ceauescu and his wonderful wife Elena--in the pay of Romania's strigoi, the vampire family haunting Romania since the 1400's--outlawed birth control so that orphanages could burgeon as living blood banks for needy vamps. Vampire ruler Vernor Deacon Trent (Lord Dracula), who has had Castle Dracula rebuilt--after many, many centuries--is tired of life, wishes to die and to invest his title in his offspring, the infant Joshua. However, Joshua, now being kept in an orphanage, is adopted by American research hematologist Kate Newman, who takes him to America. Using marvelous equipment, she discovers that Joshua has both an extraordinary, all-encompassing blood type and an organ in his stomach for digesting blood and rebuilding it as a vehicle for superimmunity. Clearly, Joshua's blood, once the chemists can break it down, will supply agents that can lick AIDS, cancer, and you name it. (Simmons's strongest ploy is the superb panache of his immense and endless pedantry about blood types, which he treats as if Jesus were being reborn in this amazing blood gift.) But the strigoi chase down Kate and Joshua in the States, trash Kate's lab and research, and kidnap Joshua. Kate takes off for Romania in the company of a soon-to-resign Catholic priest (don't miss the bathtub scene as he breaks 18 years of celibacy), and once there fights her way to Castle Dracula on the eve of Joshua's investiture.... Toothsomely well written. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

While studying diseases of the blood in present-day Romania, hematologist Kate Neuman adopts an orphaned infant with an unusual immune system. Upon her return to the States, the baby is kidnapped and returned to its homeland. Aided by an American priest and a Romanian medical student, each with his own interest in the child, Kate traces it to a mysterious group linked to the legendary Dracula. Her attempts to discover the motive behind the kidnapping and to reclaim the baby form the heart of this thrilling and wonderfully diverting novel. Simmons ( Summer of the Night , LJ 1/91) gives a chilling description of post-Ceausescu Romania and neatly ties the vampire legend into political history to create a new and clever twist to the idea of the vampire's craving for blood. The ending seems a bit too Indiana Jones-like, but the overall result is satisfying. An excellent choice for popular fiction collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/92.
- Eric W. Johnson, Teikyo Post Univ. Lib., Waterbury, Ct.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.