It's particularly unfortunate though, given that the classic literature surrounding fallen angels, particularly Satan, is far richer than the original vampire lore. I mean, Paradise Lost v. what was essentially Lord Byron fanfic? Please. No contest. More recently, there's Meredith Ann Pierce's fantastically creepy Darkangel Trilogy, which posits a kind of continuity between vampires and angels, with a Bluebeard twist. And then there's the great tragedy of Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate which succeeded in utterly wrecking one of the best fallen angels to appear in contemporary literature, the young woman who calls herself Irene Adler in The Club Dumas, the Arturo Perez-Reverte novel from which the movie was adapted. Adler is unbelievably sexy, extremely tough, and beautifully-spoken; her dialogue is full of literary allusions that might feel pretentious in another author's hands, but work the way Perez-Reverte wrote them and his translater brought them over into English. For example:
"I know what I was told a long time ago. The rainbow is the bridge between heaven and earth. It will shatter at the end of the world when the devil has crossed it on horseback."Shouldn't work, that it does. Polanski eviscerated the character, and everything else about the book. I doubt this Irene Adler will ever get her due on the big screen, or from a lot of eager young female readers, which is a shame. She's fantastic.
"Not bad. Did your grandmother tell you that?"
"I heard it told to a friend, Bileto." As she said the name, she stopped a moment and frowned tenderly, like a little girl telling a secret. "He liked horses and wine, and he's the most optimistic person I know. He's still hoping to get back to heaven."