This particular collection of well-worn genre fiction cliches was clearly blessed with a particularly loving and skillful curator. Hardly anything unexpected occurs, but there were moments where I thought something might, and I was enormously relieved when things instead played out as they did. (view spoiler)[This is a book with bad guys so bad that they wrap babies in magical barbed wire. This is a book in which the hero defeats the plans of the evil vampire through the power of true love. (hide spoiler)] I can see how this might not be what you're looking to read now (or, possibly, ever), but, if you're in the mood for this sort of thing, this is a book that pushes all the right buttons in just the right order.