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Clearly someone decided that vampires were to be included in everything now written and of easy reading consumption. With the exception of Dracula, a book which still manages to creep me out when I reread it, I'm not that interested in vampires. But still as a villain I think they're an excellent idea: they look human, should have something in connection with us, but they are predators which upsets all the notions of our own superiority and status on the food chain.

Anyway so far my total of vampire reading includes J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series (so bad but somehow I can't stop reading them no matter how dreadful they are), Tanya Huff's Blood Ties, Charlaine Harris' Dead Until Dark, and Robin McKinley's Sunshine. Leaving aside Ward, because I frequently try to pretend I've never read them, I feel compelled to rant a bit about Huff and Harris. But not McKinley, because that book was awesome.

The thing is that in most of these vampire stories there comes a point where the heroine asks the vampire if they killed people and they say yes. I feel very strongly that if you are a normal human being your reaction to someone telling you they have killed people should be more than a shrug of the shoulders. Normal people in the world these books are being marketed to don't kill people. And they don't eat people. Yes, people kill people in war and in other circumstances but those are marked off as (hopefuly) abnormal circumstances. So unless you are part of a different world or somehow have issues then you should be not that, er, sanguine about that confession. AND I JUDGE YOU HARSHLY IF YOU ROLL WITH IT. Plus, how stupid are you that the next thought that crosses your mind is not 'Hmmm. If he ate other people, maybe he might eat me?' Really stupid, that's what.



In the Harris book, Sookie, the heroine, not only doesn't seem to really blink at this, but is all annoyed that her co-workers are a bit appalled at her dating one and that one doesn't want him around when Sookie is baby-sitting. HONESTLY. You know, if you had a reformed man-eating tiger at home and said to people 'hey, I'll have him around while I look after your kids! But don't worry! He doesn't eat people any more!' I think that they would be justified in not trusting you with their children. It just made me think that Sookie was about as dumb as people thought and also incredibly self-absorbed. (Even worse, the vampire tells her that he's killed people in a voice that we are told says to her 'deal with it.' DEAL WITH IT! And this from someone who is supposedly trying to integrate into human society. I can forsee how well that one will go.) But I did like that there was a reason given why the heroine would want to date a vampire as she is a psychic and can't 'read' vampires (though at some point it seems like she can when it's convenient for the plot).

Same thing with Tanya Huff. I really liked Vicky, but it seemed highly unlikely that someone who has been a cop and has control issues would be happy partnering with someone who had not only killed people but could also either easily physically over-power you or do vampire mojo on you. There's something which works better on the TV series than the books because they've toned down her issues a lot and also it's somehow easier to skip over the whole 'hey, I've eaten people!' thing. Seriously, if your job has been putting people who do horrible things in jail, I can't imagine you will easily work with someone who presumably done his fair share of horrible things at some point

But Sunshine was just a really good book. It got the revulsion and fear of being around things that are not only infinitely more powerful than you but also see you as food and the heroine's own issues with the decisions she made. And it was an interesting world: enough like ours that you could connect but creatively reworked. I was really glad this was recced to me because I'd never have read it otherwise.



ETA: Oh god, how could I forget! I also read Twilight. Well, as much of it as I could get through but vampires who want to repeat high school and sparkle are not really my cup of tea.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com
Check out "The Blue Sword" and "The Hero and the Crown". They sorta go together. You'll find a lot of her stuff in YA lit for some reason. She is seriously an amazing writer. She, like, paints pictures with words. I guess she's really hardcore about the writing process/craft. My aunt's met her.

I feel like the author isn't smart enough to write Sookie smart. If that makes sense? Like she wants her to be a down-home spunky Southern girl who is smart and sassy and she just comes off as a sort of flaky idiot. That being said, I did like the book where Eric(k) lost his memory. V. enjoyable.

I agree that's a problem in most vampire books. Laurell K. Hamilton does some weird sort of THEY ARE COUNTER CULTURE. EVERYONE FEARS THEM LIKE THEY FEAR TEH GAY/BDSM/FREAKY IN BED PPLZ. But I think she just likes to write wildly anatomically impossible sex scenes.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com
The Sookie book also tried to do a 'this is like interracial dating' thing in the one I read but that just annoyed me. Because clearly it's not at all. One's based on racism and small-mindedness and the other is based on very real danger and the fact that this is a predator who might very well eat you (and how is that for indignity! Being eaten seems like the final insult to me!).

I only read the one so no Eric loses his memory for me! It was all Bill and Sookie and their love. Plus people getting killed but that was just background.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com
Bill annoyed the crap out of me. Actually, the more I think about it, the more the books (and most of the characters) annoy me. I get really fed up with vampire serials. I might get fed up with serials in general, but I only read vampire ones. They just get so jumping-the-shark-y and I can't handle my characters behaving that way!

Date: 2008-02-05 07:19 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com
Well, at some point you have to wonder how many more vampire-human-what have you relationships they can come up with without breaking your mind. Plus you can't really imagine vampires doing the long-term domestic thing.

Bill was just plain annoying. And all of his 'this woman is mine!' stuff was still irritating even if did stop her from getting eaten.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com
The women always seem, to me, like sort of sluts. Or easy. Or whatever. I mean, I'm not that much younger than the heroines often are and I haven't even had ONE serious relationship let alone however many they cycle through. It sort of bothers me. I mean they moan about their ex-bfs, but their relationships seem very throw-away with other characters.

Ughhhhh you didn't even get to the book with the weird-ass inbred werewolves. Don't get me started on DIS WOMYN MYN!!!1

Date: 2008-02-05 07:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com
My big problem is that the vampires, etc. always seem to be madly, well, oversexed. I guess that's normal in a romance with lusty men, but sometimes you wonder how they ever get around to the blood-draining (maybe it doesn't take too long?) or world-saving.

I think it's a problem with a series that if you are going to sell your main characters as being madly in love with each other/desperately drawn to each other in one, it's going to be a bit of a problem when you move them on. It probably works better with older people for some reason (for me at any rate). People can fall in and out of love at astonishing rates but you would imagine that at some point all the passion would be tiring and you'd like a rest. Plus it does make you doubt the sincerity of passion it is a bit short-lived. Better just to have them just sleeping with people in that case, IMO, rather than having deep relationships.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com
Yeah. When did they amass their empire if they get that sideswiped by some young hot piece of ass? MAKES NO SENSE. Also, they never found their TWU WUV is bullshit. I mean if humans can find someone they at least tolerate for a 45 year marriage, some immortal dude has pretty good odds. Also, why not go for, you know, A CHICK WHO WON'T KICK IT IN 70 YEARS?

I agree with what you're saying completely. I just feel like the time that these books are encompassing is, like, three months. I wouldn't even be sure if I liked a HORSE in 3 months, let alone go rocketing through these oh-so-serious and consequence filled relationships. Then again, I am not, for lack of a better word, retarded.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com
My strong feeling is that literary vampires, for people who live (potentially) forever, do not do the long-term planning that well. Or maybe they just have the power to suppress the memory of that last tragic relationship. On the other hand, they clearly have mad financial skillz.

The problem is that the whole vampire thing isn't going to work unless there's something remotely human involved at some point. I'm hardly going to be that interested a thoroughly alien society if there's not connection at all to something that's a bit familiar. Which is where your human comes in.

Plus everyone knows that vampire mojo madly speeds up everything. And closes off the bits of your brain that make you sane or aware of any danger. THERE'S A REASON THAT DEER DON'T DATE COUGARS, YOU KNOW! A clever book would have a blast working around that, but most books can't be bothered.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com
Also thanks for the McKinley recs. I'll certainly check more of them out as I thought the book was excellent. Is it part of a new series? It read like the first book in a series.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] meganbmoore.livejournal.com
"The Blue Sword" is set a long time before "The Hero and the Crown" The events are mentioned, iirc, but they're a legend. Honestly, I think it works better if you read the second book first, but they deal with different characters altogether, they're just set in the same world.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:21 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com
She doesn't really write series. "The Blue Sword" and "The Hero and the Crown" go together insofar as they occur in the same world. "The Hero and the Crown" is the prequel to "The Blue Sword", so read it second. It sort of fills in gaps from the previous novel and fleshes out the legend that is introduced. I always sort of placed the world of "The Hero and the Crown" as a sort of alternate Victorian-era England because they had trains but still used calvary for armies.

McKinley also writes a lot of restructured fairy-tales and folklore. "The Door In the Hedge" is a collection of novellas with 3 or 4 stories in it. "Spindles End" is a novel about Snow White. "Beauty" and "Rose Daughter" are both retellings of Sleeping Beauty but are NOT connected except in their reference to the original tale. "The Outlaws of Sherwood" retells Robin Hood. I'm not sure I read "Deerskin" and I haven't read her newest book.

She generally writes very good fantasy that contain a lot of elements of "our" world in them. Very parallel universe type things.

Date: 2008-02-05 07:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com
Oh, and she's said she "knows more of Sunshine's story" but basically that nothing has struck her profoundly that she needs to write about it. So it's just a stand-alone.

Date: 2008-02-05 02:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] queenofthorns.livejournal.com
I really like The Hero and the Crown a lot better than The Blue Sword (I think I may be alone in that, but hey ...) Also, I think Deerskin, which is semi-based on Perrault's "Peau d'Âne", and is both creepy and beautiful (with one of the loveliest canine characters I've ever read about) is brilliant.

Date: 2008-02-05 01:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cbackson.livejournal.com
AHHHHHHH the Blue Sword. Oh, I love that book so much.

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