This is a Young Adult book and I'd give it only 3 stars due to over-done cliche'd subject matter, except it was written back in 1985 when it was actually relatively original. Pale, beautiful vampyre: yes. Pure, loyal girl whose love will save him: yes. Like I said, sounds terribly cliche, but it's actually very well written and has a lot of wild mythical elements that set it clearly on a very different world from ours and save it from being trite, even after the intervening 3 decades of overdone vampire books. This is the first in a trilogy, although it can be read alone and has a reasonably satisfying ending, it's clear there will be more to come. As it's a young adult book it's a very quick read.