Vampire fiction has become increasingly popular over the last few years. 'Most strangely, I heard in the midst of this roar a cry I could understand at will: 'Kaziklu Bey! The Impaler!' In the heart of the chaos I seemed to see a figure different from the rest, a dark clad, cloaked man on horseback wheeling among the bright colors, his face drawn up in a snarl of concentration and his sword harvesting Ottoman heads, which rolled heavily in their pointed helmets.' I saw the fluttering banners, the splashes of blood on the legs of their horses, the spear and the crescent, the glitter of sunlight on scimitars and chain mail, the beautiful and mutilated young heads, faces, bodies heard the screams of men crossing into the land of Allah and the cries of their faraway mothers and fathers smelled the reek of burning houses and fresh gore, the sulfur of cannon fire, the conflagrations of tent and bridge and horseflesh.

'Then - and this was probably the worst of all the awful things that followed - Turgut pressed his friend's hand to his own heart and broke out in a keening wail, words that seemed to come to us from the depths of a history not only too ancient but too alien for me to distinguish their syllables, a howl of grief akin to the muezzin's call to prayer, which we had heard from the minarets in the city - except that Turgut's wail sounded more like a summons to hell - a string of horror-stricken notes that seemed to arise from the memory of a thousand Ottoman camps, a million Turkish soldiers.

The historian elizabeth kostova review