Books like Vampire Diary: The Embrace

This book has earned one of the "best of all times" awards in my collection. It stands the proud king of the Vampire books, because it excels in all categories: engaging characters, top notch setting (courtesy of the World of Darkness game line), solid (if now usual) story. And after re-reading it -- I remembered why -- not that I did need much being reminded.I first read it compiled in the "Essential World of Darkness", a gathering of tales of the five World of Darkness games (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Wraith and Changeling), and I was surprised by it to the point of me spending time tracking down an original copy.The tale is, at it's core, very simple: a competent young man does his job so well that he draws the attention of his boss, who happens to be a vampire. He ends up turned into a vampire, and in the stages of denial, he refuses to drink blood -- ending up accidentally killing his lover.Now, this is a short novel, and the thing that makes it so extraordinary is the fact that it's narrated as a diary - but not any diary. The diary of someone with an amazing talent for drawing. Pictures and words mingle, organic, handwritten - at no moment you see a computer interfering. The reason why I went out of my way to find the original is because I discovered they had actually published it in an ACTUAL diary format, with folded letters and postcards stuck between the pages, and an actual lock. You can hold this book, and easily think it is someone's diary. And that, I think, is part of the magic. Another thing that the original book had better than the compilation is the use of colour. Red, to be precise. The whole thing is written in black, except a certain tale tell moment -- in the WOD, vampires weep tears of blood, and seeing the red droplets with the smudges of red after the main character tries to make sense of what happened become visceral, much better than if they had been just words.Even when he tries to grab his last shreds of sanity writing in irregular, violent letters, "I AM MY OWN MASTER" you are struck much more deeply by the tragedy than if it had just been clinically and sterily written in ARIAL 12, no matter how good the description.I'm not easily moved reader. I've read too much to feel sympathy for simple plots or cliché, rehashed tales.But this one, as rehashed, reused and retold as might be touched me. Maybe because it was simple. Maybe because it had no pretensions to be anything more than it was. Maybe because you know so little of the monster that turns the main character, and you are as lost as the main character. You are trapped at his side, in his head, fighting the beast. His loss is your loss.And in the end -- you get a reason why this journal kept having entries. After spoiling so much, I will leave this unspoilt. But there is a reason for everything. What starts as a journal written to stave off boredom, soon becomes an artistic release of a man both excited with his job and love, then turns into a struggle to retain one's identity-- but in the end, the last few entries left me with a chill, as I realized what the mysterious letter folded in an envelope in the beginning of the book meant.And then, then you hit that last, scribbled note -- not an entry, just a note. And you realize that this man-turned-vampire's tale is just beginning... and the worst is yet to come.Even for a short novel, it's quite short (probably not even reaching 10.000 words), but the story is written in it with more than words. Entire stories are told with the use of the props, the art, the tiny notations and remarks. It's one of those cases where less is more.If you're a fan of vampires, and tragedy, pick this one up -- in the original format, if you can (White Wolf published it recently as a PDF). It's definitely worth it.