If you're looking for the ultimate Our Vampires Are Different novel, your search is at an end. French author Paul Féval's book Vampire City was published in 1875 (it was actually probably originally serialized in 1867), almost 25 years before Bram Stoker's Dracula would set out the "rules" for vampires.
Feval was working from the same few scraps of vampire lore and history that Stoker was, but Feval decided his vampires would be green-glowing, hair-stealing, clockwork creatures whose victims become things like dogs with human faces. The novel stars Ann Radcliffe, the gothic novelist, as a young woman. As both a very weird vampire novel and an early horror comedy tale, Vampire City is loaded with unbuilt tropes.
Vampire City contains examples of:
- Clone by Conversion: Goetzi to Polly Bird
- Gender Bender: Polly Bird in a unique way, Goetzi turns merges with her and makes her his Doppelgänger
- Greater-Scope Villain: An unseen Evil Priest
- Historical Person Punchline: The mysterious "God like" Englishmen who twice served as a Deus ex Machina is revealed in the end to be Lord Wellington
- Lesbian Vampire: Not in a standard way at all, but in the end Polly (See Gender Bender entry) plans to Marry the Damsel in Distress and then feed on her.
- Mordor: Selene, the title location is Exactly What It Says on the Tin
- Überwald: Selene, the title location is Exactly What It Says on the Tin
