Vampire Hunter D

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I started reading the Vampire Hunter D novel series because I fell in love with the world and characters when I watched the movies. If you enjoy either of the movie adaptations than you will enjoy the novels as well, unless you don't enjoy reading, or prefer manga/graphic novels over chapter books.
Hideyuki's writing in these novels is beautiful; he depicts the setting in each scene extremely well and so eloquently that you can perfectly imagine the world he's building around you, however it isn't written in a way that is too descriptive that it would potentially get overwhelming or boring in any way. The lore ... of the world itself is paced out well throughout the story, giving you snippets of the history, politics, technology etc. as needed when it correlates with what is currently happening; it's informative yet flows naturally, without feeling like an overwhelming info dump. The characters are introduced slowly but are well fleshed out as you're reading. It feels like you grow with the characters as they progress through the adversities they face throughout the novel, and they way they are written makes them feel real and human, or very inhuman in the case of the malevolent vampires and other monstrous creatures. These villain feel real in the way that their motives are given good reasoning and the lore of the creatures give you insight on why they behave the way they do.
If you love vampires, dystopian fantasy, or gothic fiction, you will love this series and I highly recommend reading. You wont be disappointed.

Before anything else, this is a review of the first novel only, not the entire series. So I can't judge the rest.
If there was any novel that really should have been a graphic novel, it is this one. It wants to be a graphic novel so badly that it seems to abandon the idea that it is a novel at all and lingers somewhere in between the two. The narrator desperately wants us to understand how amazing D is. Instead of letting D's perfection be revealed to us, it is forced upon us. He does ... this by describing the immense speed with which every offense is executed. Because D is so fast in his attacks, the reader must endure a sort of novel replay where the writer has to back track and describe, in slow motion, what just happened that was too fast for the reader to even recognize. It is aggravating to say the least.
The story itself I have never been a fan of even in film form. It isn't compelling to me to read about a girl who is willing to trade sex for just about anything it seems. Already she is a weak character when we first meet her. She only gets weaker. Perhaps I should give the third novel a try since, as the basis for Bloodlust, it is more intriguing.
If you are a fan of Yoshitaka Amano, like I am, check out Coffin: the Art of Vampire Hunter D. Through this you can relish the illustrations without having to read the books.

There is a phrase that exists to describe works to which we are unreasonably attracted to despite their utter awfulness: so bad it's good.

The writing is laughable. This guy is like Dan Brown... in third grade. Words like "vermilion" and "phosphorescent" abound.

The story itself is not that bad. It's very cliche, but that's part of the appeal. With its thoroughly developed world, frequent homages to earlier vampiric lore, and an unwaveringly stoic hero, it has a very cult feel despite the lack of quality. Basically, the foundation of the story is fantastic. What is subsequently done with that foundation is anything but.

Would I recommend reading ... these books? Maybe. The language is excruciating. It's not the kind of bad that flows because of its simplicity; it's laden with details of the worst kind (vehicles, weapons, and generally all machinery are described with useless precision), with purple prose, tangents, and poor translation. For this alone, waiting for an adaptation might be a better idea (so far there are two movies and the manga is in progress). But if you are interested in the inner workings of D's world, it is very much essential.