Vampires in the heart of Styria! Published more than a quarter of a century before Dracula and having influenced Stoker (the "missing" first chapter of Dracula, now published as Dracula's Guest, was also set in Styria, Austria), this novella sets it's female villain in the guise of a noble born Austrian girl only some years older than Anne Rice's infamous Claudia who appeared in print more than a century after our not so dearly departed Carmilla. This novella is certainly an entertaining read and establishes much of the lore of vampirism that Stoker and subsequent authors use. It also sets the heart of vampirism further west than the popular Transylvania in, what was at the time of Stoker, Hungary. In Carmilla vampirism finds the heart of its domain in Styria, Austria near the Hungarian border and from there spreads into the Balkans and Eastern Europe as well as north into regions of what are today Germany, The Czech Republic and Poland.