Now you have to stay with me here because I'm going to tell you something impossible.  Octavia E. Butler wrote a book about vampires that is not the normals vampire "shlock".  Fledgling reads more like sci-fi then gothic fantasy book....in fact I think Butler did a great service to her vampire book by removing all the "gothic trappeings" that normally get dragged into such books.

Like much of Butler's works the book is about race, social norms, and our society just as much as ist is about telling a good story.  But, if you want to read a very interesting twist on the tale of a vampire you can't do any better then this book.

Update: I guess Lilith's Brood is not a sequal, it just another of her great books.