A review by marginaliant
Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures by Bill Schutt, Patricia Wynne

3.0

This is an extremely fun book with lots of interesting facts, but it is woefully disorganized and unbalanced. Schutt took on a lot here, discussing the microbiological nature of blood, the macrobiological evolution of blood-sucking creatures, medical history, folklore, and modern pest advice, but it's just too much. It lacks sign posts to indicate where we are and where we are going, and key information about the evolution of bloodsuckers is left until the very end in a stunted final chapter, when that should have been upfront. It is not bad by any means, but needed some structural reorganizing and a whip-cracking editor.