Just a quick note to let you all know that I, Rosie, have not entirely vanished!  Hello!  I’m still alive!  Morgan and I will both be graduating from University this year, and we hope to have more time to write reviews in the upcoming months.  

In other news, I won an award for my collection of vampire literature!  I mention this only because the essay I submitted was a slimmed-down version of my Thoughts on Vampire Literature post.  Indirectly, dear readers, you have assisted me in winning my first award for writing and book nerdery!  I hope there will be many more to come…

I have also begun a new book recommendation/discussion/review blog which features shorter reviews and more consistent posting.  You can find it here, at Rosie’s Reading Room.  You are welcome to submit a recommendation or review, or suggest books for people to read via ask, or discuss books that have already been recommended.

Lots of love,

Rosie

Characters: *****(4 Stars)

Character Development: **** (4 Stars)


Plot: *** (3 Stars)


Writing: **** (4 Stars)


Overall: **** (4 Stars)


Age range recommendation: 16 +

Review by Morgan

I read this book in two sittings, so it’s clearly got plenty of excellent qualities. I love child-detective stories, especially when those intrepid youngsters are the protagonists of adult novels and, therefore, their deductions about the complex world around them can be completely off track, often to hilarious or poetically tragic results. Despite Gwenni’s tender age of twelve, The Earth Hums in B Flat is about a grown up mystery: yes, there’s a disappearance and death and useless police officers, but the real plot revolves around the little mysteries which flourish in silence to engulf families and entire towns. Our odd little heroine narrates the novel in first person, providing an endearing perspective on events which might be only depressing, rather than intriguing, if they were reported through a more down-to-earth point of view.

Gwenni’s home life is difficult with an unstable mother and a cruel sister; her best friend and she are growing apart as they disagree about the importance of boys vs. magic plans; and to top it all off the intimidating father of two children she takes care of has disappeared, pursued by a mysterious “black dog.” Mr. Ifan Evans’ disappearance causes little ruptures in the every day order of Gwenni’s small Welsh town, and when she decides to take matters into her own hands like the detectives in her books, she uncovers more secrets than answers and learns that some stones are best left unturned. The Earth Hums in B Flat is an easy and delightful read, and I enjoyed watching Gwenni’s observations about human nature develop from naivety to somber comprehension without ever losing the innocent edge which make the betrayals of the real world even more poignant. It’s not an uplifting story, though, so while fans of The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie by Alan Bradley will enjoy the similar narrative style, don’t expect an up-front story where the murderer is evil and a clever child’s perseverance necessarily prevails. The family in The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie is dysfunctional in an amusing way; but the families in Gwenni’s town are just plain messed up. There are a few intriguing minor characters, and the setting – a Welsh-speaking village in the 1950s – is seamlessly described to create a unique stage for story’s events. Some elements of social awkwardness around language, war, and class are seamlessly woven into the small-town plot, placing the story in a wider context which should appeal to anyone with an interest in British cultural history.

While I found the writing to be captivating and the characters compelling, there were a few things about The Earth Hums In B Flat which left me feeling a little let down once I reached the novel’s end. Namely, the end of the novel itself. While I was prepared for a pessimistic ending – meaning, I knew that this was not the sort of mystery which would end with peace for the village, justice for all, and due credit going to the amateur detective – I can’t help but feel that Mari Strachan could have let Gwenni receive a little more credit for the hardships she experiences at the hands of her mother and the small minded town. Some characters were sympathetic and kind, especially her memorable grandmother and absurdly saint-like father, but many of the people who made her life difficult never really get their just deserts. Of course, this is how the world works: a child might be in the right, but those who were wrong might never admit or even realize their faults.

Life isn’t fair, and although the unfairness of this novel left me feeling unsatisfied, I can see that it was an important element in the book’s message. Strachan is honest about how ignored young people can feel, how adults never listen even when they should, and this is a point made time and time again in children’s books but not nearly enough in fiction aimed at adults. There’s nothing wildly inappropriate here, some domestic violence and intimated deviancy, but younger readers might be disappointed by The Earth Hums in B Flat because the plot is driven by subtle relationships rather than action, and the writing expects that readers would have passed the point in their lives when they thought like Gwenni does. We must be able to see where she’s mistaken in her judgement to understand the story’s full scope. I enjoyed this book – it was the perfect cure to a day of feeling generally unwell – and I’d recommend it to someone who wanted an absorbing and self-contained story, a mystery which doesn’t follow the patterns we’ve come to expect, and a reminder of how magical life can be when you’re young and how strange it is when life fails to meet your fantasized expectations.

Review by Morgan

Since this is an anthology of short stories, the star ratings will be slightly different.

Star Ratings:

Writing: *** (3 stars. The authors chose to present their stories in their raw and largely unedited forms: notes in the margins point out what they would like to change. Despite the rough writing in places, the general quality is very good.)

Arrangement: **** (4 stars. Stories are relatively varied and presented in an appealing order. I wish the final story had been stronger, though.)

Balance: **** (4 stars. We get a nice mix of fantasy, horror, speculative fiction, legends, and psychological darkness.)

Personality: ***** (5 stars. I mean to say that the authors’ personalities and their writing styles shine through their commentary in the best of ways. We see how they work as writers and it makes them even more lovable/admirable.)

Overall: ***** (4 stars.  I really like this book!)

Inspired by their collaborative website, The Merry Sisters of Fate (merryfates.com), The Curiosties showcases quickly written pieces of short fiction by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff. The stories tend to fall within their collective genre of paranormal or speculative Young Adult fiction, but each author contributes stories which refuse to be contained by one genre or even – as the amusingly hand-written margin notes point out – by their own distinctive writing styles. Brenna, Tessa, and Maggie share their thought processes, inspiration, and their opinions about each others’ work, and we get to see how their voices have changed and developed as a result of their literary friendship. For readers who pick up The Curiosities as fans of one particular author, there will be plenty of familiar themes and fixations within these pages. But it’s the unexpected pieces, the stories which surprised the writer, and which her friends admit to wishing they had written first, which make this collection so valuable to admirers of these authors and their subjects.

I was only slightly familiar with the authors of The Curiosities when I started reading. I’ve shared my high opinion of Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys already, and I remember getting carried away into the dark and intricate world of Yovanoff’s The Replacement a couple of Novembers ago, but I wasn’t particularly well versed in their bodies of work and I’d never read Gratton at all (though I wish I had – she’s great!). My ignorance didn’t really matter, though, because through witty banter with her friends and wise thoughts on writing, history, magic, etc, each writer bares her personality and makes her voice as distinct as if we knew her personally. The informal tone of this collection sets off some of the truly dark stuff which it contains, and you get to read a well balanced combination of YA anthology and “How We Write” essay, all in one attractive package.

The stories themselves are excellent fun, provided that you enjoy the sort of writing done by these women. While the pieces are varied in terms of plot and format, and while the order in which they’re presented keeps the pace from dragging, they are resolutely stories for Young Adult readers who like elements of the paranormal; the esoteric; the sinister; and the weird. (A note: by “Young Adult reader”, I refer to anyone, young or adult or somewhere in between, who enjoys YA fiction.) You will find monsters and creatures to suit every taste, retellings of legends and stories prompted by fairy tales, good old fashioned ghost stories, horrifying visions of the future, and even some stories featuring no technical magic at all but which embody a perfectly chilling sense of dread. You will read about highschool, college, alternative historical settings, the ancient north, and steampunk or sc-fi cityscapes. There is kissing, killing, and wit galore.

What you won’t find in The Curiosities is grown-up, tightly plotted, examinations of every day life; at least, there are no mundane sensibilities left to carry a story on their own. But themes get heavy in this collection, underneath the strange and beautiful surface. Maggie’s pieces about geniuses behaving badly and legends existing in our world deal with questions of power, loyalty, and how to spend the time we have given to us. These are questions which The Raven Boys also handled very well. Tessa’s tales about monsters and complicated spells examine the importance of bravery in the face of sorrow and how traditions shape our lives. And Brenna’s stories about psycho killers tricked by even-more-psychotic killers, lonely ghosts, and wishes gone awry reveal the capacity for darkness which waits within all of us, and that desperate need for understanding which can save us when we’re young. These ladies know what they’re doing, and they do it well: telling us eternal truths hidden deep within compelling stories which appeal to our sense of the macabre and the fantastic.

Star Ratings
Characters: ***** (5 Stars)
Character Development: **** (4 Stars)
Plot: ***** (5 Stars)
Writing: **** (4 Stars)
Overall: ***** (5 Stars)
Age range recommendation: 13 +


Review by Morgan

This is the sort of novel I want to read all day, every day. This is the sort of book I want to write, except Lindsey Barraclough has already written it. And I’m so very glad she did. Rosie will verify that when I saw the title of this book as we were aimlessly browsing Barnes and Noble, I seized it with such energy of action that it must have looked like I was struck by lightning. Long Lankin falls into my very favorite tradition of modern literature: haunting stories inspired by unsettling British legends and faery stories, usually featuring young children and strange settings, but always grounded somewhat in our own realm and history. Other books I put in that category are Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones and The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea.

Inspired one of my favorite creepy old folk songs (of the same title), Long Lankin follows young Cora and her toddler sister Mimi from London to Guerdon Hall in the countryside in the decade following World War Two. Cora’s mother has been driven periodically insane by some dark memory from her childhood and their father can not take care of them, so they must stay with their less-than-maternal and wildly mysterious Great-aunt Ida on the ancient and decaying family estate. Guerdon Hall makes a perfect setting for this dark and haunting story: there are strange claw marks on the door, latin wards of protection on the gate, and Aunt Ida is vehement that no doors or windows are to be opened under any circumstances, and that they must never go into the yard when the nearby tide is out. Cora makes friends with a local boy, Roger, and his pack of comically English siblings, and soon enough the children break a few rules in pursuit of adventure in the small town. Unfortunately, their adventures in the forbidden church near the estate and their curiosity about the history of Cora’s ancestors prove to be more dangerous than they expected, and the twisted spirit of Long Lankin from the town’s old legend returns to continue his hunt for innocent blood.

The novel uses the general narrative of the folk song as background to the story we read: generations ago in Guerdon Hall a false nurse let Long Lankin in so that they could kill the baby and the mother when the lord of the estate was gone. In fact, the song lyrics make a ghostly appearance when Cora explores the forbidden attic centuries after the fabled murder, thus combining the real legend and Barraclough’s own invention almost seamlessly. She creates an origin for the song as well as a thrilling continuation of its nightmarish characters. While this appealed to me as a fan of the legend, it’s described well enough to be understood by a reader learning about the story for the first time, too. I loved reading little lines here and there which came directly from the song, and yet my prior knowledge in no way spoiled the novel’s plot or its ending. The plot has a traditional feel, but it was actually quite unpredictable and – to my eternal relief – there was no awkward and totally out-of-the-blue plot twist halfway through to ruin the ghostly atmosphere which Barraclough builds so well in the beginning.  In short, the pacing of Long Lankin is superb: a well balanced mix of spirited childish adventure and bone-chilling supernatural suspense.

Several aspects of Long Lankin help it stand out from the other “Young Adult Adventure” books which were its neighbors on Barnes and Noble’s shelf. For one thing, the main characters are a young girl and a young boy, but they are childish enough that their friendship never develops into one of those overwrought romances which weigh down so many other stories. Their determined innocence fits well with the setting of post-war England, and the drama of Long Lankin comes almost entirely from the horrifying imagery and the mysteries which surround Cora’s family. It was a blessed relief to read an entire book without one moment of tragic teenage romantic agony. The writing and story crafting skills which Barraclough demonstrates captured my interest on their own, and I hope that young adults who read this book appreciate that scary stories can be gripping without any real romance at all.

There is true evil in Long Lankin – and that evil is terrifying – but even the good characters have depth and faults. Cora and Mimi are likeable and sympathetic, but they can be brats at times (as children are). Their Aunt Ida wants to do the right thing and protect them, but she also desires peace and solitude and does not have the patience to raise children. Roger and his brothers try to be dutiful sons, yet their adventurous spirits get them into trouble and the natural selfishness which comes with childhood blinds them to their parents’ struggles. These characters all grow and learn as they fight against the shadows of evil – and sometimes each other – but the children never quite lose the power of their innocence. The character development is good but never contrived, another way in which Long Lankin is better than most books I’ve read for the same age group.

I’ve mentioned how frightening the book can be, and I want to make it clear that I am a twenty-two year old girl who has loved ghost stories and scary monster tales since I was a child. Consider yourselves warned, therefore, when I say that this book gave me chills. It’s a little bloody and very suspenseful, but nothing to make you slam the book shut in disgust. Instead, the creepy foreboding mood which starts early on just builds and builds until the very last page of the book.  Eerie dread which comes out of nowhere, the stomach dropping realizations that something is terribly wrong, and the paralyzing sight of a half-dead creature crawling outside your window: the book is full of these moments which would wake us up screaming if we dreamed them ourselves.

I would not recommend that anyone under the age of twelve start reading Long Lankin, despite the young age of its protagonists, unless those children have uncommonly obliging parents who do not mind waking up in the middle of the night to check windows. It’s scary stuff, even for me, and I’m a scary little person. Read Long Lankin if you love grim folktales, if you appreciate the charm of the English countryside and embrace the horrific past which so often accompanies that setting, and if you have several hours of uninterrupted reading time ahead of you. Once you start reading Long Lankin, you’ll be desperate to finish before you have to go to sleep.

Review by Morgan.  Apologies for the short review and the brusqueness of tone, I originally reviewed the book on Amazon, because I wanted other readers of my interests to know that The Raven Boys is better than the cover and blurbs make it out to be.

Star Ratings
Characters: **** (4 Stars)
Character Development: *** (3 Stars)
Plot: **** (4 Star)
Writing: *** (3 Stars)
Overall: **** (4 Stars)

Age range recommendation: 13+

This is the first book by Stiefvater I’ve ever read, though she’s extremely popular in the UK and I’m assuming in America as well.  I ordered The Raven Boys on a whim because I needed another purchase to merit free shipping on some books for my dissertation, and it was new and caught my eye.  I had my doubts but read it anyway, and here is why I’m glad I did:

The cover of The Raven Boys featured a tag line of “if you kiss your true love, he will die,” and the back description went on about how “This is the year [Blue] will fall in love.” I was, therefore, a little worried that The Raven Boys would turn out to be a dark-but-uninspired teenage romance with hints of the supernatural but more emphasis on the love story than on “the sinister world of the Raven Boys.”

Much to my surprise and appreciation, The Raven Boys turned out to be a fascinating - and quite original - adventure story with only a bit of the obnoxious romance I was expecting. The Virginia setting was quite vivid, the characters were amusing, and the plot (privileged high school boys use their resources to track down an ancient Welsh king’s burial site, and a local girl with psychic blood gets drawn into their search through a mix of curiosity and fate) was well imagined.

The novel had plenty of faults: too many side plots running at once meant that the story-line seemed disjointed at times and the ending was rushed/not explained very fluidly, but these problems didn’t irk me as much as they could have since I genuinely enjoyed the mystery and atmosphere of the story. Stiefvater’s writing is neither noticeably brilliant nor glaringly awful, her characterizations can be pretty obvious at times, and the book falls into the YA trend of setting up for a sequel when the tale should have been told in a single, longer, novel. But it’s clear that Maggie Stiefvater tried hard to write an imaginative novel for teenagers, one which didn’t fall unimpressively into a tired-out genre, and I would say that she succeeds.

There is moral ambiguity; there is genuine angst about the role fate plays in a person’s life and choices; and there are reflections about family, friendship, loyalty, and sacrifice which will resonate with both young adult readers and we-who-are-technically-adults-though-we-hate-it. There is also a truly fantastic twist in the story, one which completely justifies what I originally thought was a terribly written character, and I will admit that I wanted to high-five Stiefvater through time and space when I realized that she had known what she was doing with that character all along.

I guess I would call The Raven Boys more of a supernatural adventure, a ghost story, or a boarding school mystery than a Young Adult romance. Sure, there are four boys who make one quirky girl seem like she’s the center of the universe (which is one of my least favorite trends in YA literature these days) but there are enough good bits to make up for that and to ensure that I will read the sequel whenever it comes out.

Fool’s Run by Patricia McKillip

Star Ratings
Characters: *** (3 Stars)
Character Development: ** (2 Stars)
Plot: * (1 Star)
Writing: **** (4 Stars)
Overall: *** (3 Stars)

Age Recommendation:  17+

Review by Rosie

This is the first book of Patricia A. McKillip’s that I didn’t like that much. I still liked the style and the characters, but the plot was minimal even for her, and she lost a lot of the things she’s usually best at. She normally flows several different characters and storylines together in this fabulous tapestry of fairy-tale wonder, but this one fell a little flat. I never quite got my feet under me. I liked the obvious sci-fi bits - the spaceship and the prison - but I just couldn’t get through to the characters and their motivations. I would recommend any of her other books, but leave this one until you already love her and can handle one bad grape in the bunch.

And now that I have said that I will say this:  you will never again hear me be anything less than violently enthusiastic about anything Patricia McKillip writes.  That one paragraph pained me more than most things I’ve ever written.

Greetings, virtual readers one and all.

While I’ve been mostly trapped in dissertation-land, researching all there is to know about violence in children’s literature, I’ve had a few moments to read some novels of my own choosing as well.  One such novel wasDodger,the new Terry Pratchett book.  As it was a new release and rather atmospheric for the darkening days and dreary weather Scotland is currently experiencing, I wrote a review of the book but ended up sending it to the university newspaper’s Arts and Culture blog, because I do crave literary legitimacy every now and then.  I’ll put the review up here too, though, because it may be one of the only reviews I get to write this month.  A critical analysis of Peter Pan is just waiting to ensnare my attention for eternity.

As an avid fan of Pratchett’s Discworld series and of Mr. Dickens’ novels I spent a torturous few days staring longingly at Dodger as I passed Waterstones before I finally gave in and bought the hardcover.  From the off, it is obvious that this novel was set in Dickensian London – a fact which should be obvious given the title and main character, who was one of Dickens’ many creation – and I resolved not to search for the outlandish, farcical elements of Discworld in Dodger.  It is important that any previous fans of Terry Pratchett become comfortable with this idea before they dive into the murky sewers and shadowy corners of Dodger‘s London, because this novel is quite different from Pratchett’s hilarious fantasies, though it does retain his warm humor and wry view of humanity.

The story itself is an adventure and a mystery, starring young Dodger with guest appearances by Dickens, Henry Mayhew, and some other familiar names.  Dodger is a ‘tosher’: someone who scavenges the sewers of London for dropped riches and trinkets, and a popular rascal amongst the less-washed citizens of Victorian London.  When he rescues a girl from some violent men, he finds himself wrapped up in political intrigue (not to mention emotional turmoil) well above his head and his status.  We join Dodger as he works out the mystery girl’s origins, navigating through some awkward upper class dinner parties, gets himself into scrapes only to talk himself out of them.  Occasionally the main character seemed a little too smooth and unnaturally lucky, but the somber and often enlightening presence of his wise landlord Solomon served well to keep the tale from losing its grip on the reader.  While the book is an enjoyably easy read, it makes gentle observations of poverty and misery which would make Mayhew proud; and indeed, it is to Henry Mayhew that Terry Pratchett has dedicated his book.

In his acknowledgements Pratchett describes Dodger as ‘a historical fantasy, and not a historical novel,’ and while there is no magic of the hocus-pocus variety to be found, the fantasy comes in a form I can only describe as a historically-minded literature nerd’s daydream.  Characters from Victorian legend, literary giants, and historical figures all mingle together in this atmospheric mystery story.  It’s got adventure, romance, and a wink or two from the author to his readers as he sends his hapless protagonist to Fleet Street for a shave or places the young vagabond next to Sir Robert Peel at a dinner party.  I was so fully absorbed into the story as it twisted through the sewers and streets of London that I didn’t have time to miss the oddities of the Discworld novels; Dodger may not be as funny, but on a dark October night it is the perfect book for history and literature enthusiasts as well as long time fans of Terry Pratchett.

The article on The Saint’s blog can be found here: http://www.thesaint-online.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Terry_Pratchett_Dodger_cover.jpg

Read-on, my friends, while the days are still long!

—Morgan

Father’s Day by Buzz Bissinger

Star Ratings
Structure: *** (3 Stars)
Writing: **** (4 Stars)
Insight: ** (2 Stars)
Overall: *** (3 Stars)

Age Range Recommendation: 17+
Review by Rosie

This review merits a small caveat: I did not originally write it for this blog.  It’s written in a very different style than my usual.  Father’s Day is a memoir, and therefore cannot really be judged on characters or plot.  It’s a true story.  I didn’t love it.  I would recommend it for people who have a loved one with brain damage.  I am lucky in that no one in my life has ever suffered something like that.  I think that a lot of my problems with Father’s Day stem from not really connecting to the major issue.  I just can’t relate.  I’ve never been close to anyone who was operating at less than full brain capacity.  I wouldn’t have chosen to write a review of this book, but having written it I figured I might as well share it with you lovely lot.  Enjoy!

The subtitle of Father’s Day is misleading.  It reads, “A Journey into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son.”  It should read, “My Struggle to Understand My Extraordinary Son,” or something similar.  The book isn’t really about Buzz Bissinger’s savant son Zach, it’s about Buzz himself.

The book is structured around a road trip, but like the road trip itself it goes in a few unexpected directions.  Buzz expects that Las Vegas will be the most exciting part of their trip for Zach and spends a great deal of time talking about his plans for what they’ll do in Sin City.  As it turns out, he’s wrong.  On page 161 he writes, “Odessa has been the most powerful part of the trip…. Once again Zach and I have set a road trip first: nobody in the history of the world, ever, has chosen Odessa for a vacation.”
The book is defined by Buzz’s shattered expectations.  He expects two healthy sons.  Instead he gets one healthy son and Zach, brain damaged through no fault of his own due to oxygen deprivation at birth.  He expects his sons to make something of themselves.  Instead he writes of Zach’s job as a grocery store bagger, saying, “I cannot imagine my son doing such work at the age of twenty-four.  It shames me…” (Bissinger, 1).  He expects Zach to enjoy Las Vegas.  Instead, Zach is overwhelmed and unable to process anything.  Perhaps appropriately, my expectations were not met.

Buzz spends most of the book inside his own mind and emotions.  He spends a lot of time analyzing his reactions to his son, and he writes them all down with precision and honesty.  He recounts conversations with Zach that mostly consist of Zach saying “yeah,” and Buzz trying to see whether he understands.  The conversations are opaque and Buzz can’t parse them.  He knows how to interact with Zach and what questions he needs to ask to make sure he’s functioning correctly, but he doesn’t understand Zach’s thinking process at all.  As a result Zach is an enigma to the reader.

Since Buzz recounts his difficulties in accepting Zach’s condition we see the internal struggle he goes through every time Zach shows obvious signs of his condition.  What he doesn’t spend any time on is speculation as to what Zach thinks about when he’s clearly hiding his condition to save his father’s feelings.  Buzz does an excellent job of recounting his own struggles, but barely says anything about Zach’s.  For a memoir supposedly about his son, he doesn’t spend a lot of time analyzing his emotional state.  He portrays Zach as emotionally flat, only occasionally registering a vague like or dislike for something.

Buzz tries to show his love for his son by extolling his phenomenal memory and loving nature.  Most of this comes across as a man snatching at anything good about his child’s mind.  Where Buzz succeeds is his introspection about his son.  When Zach surprises him with a picture of his family at the very end of the trip Buzz is overwhelmed by gratitude.  He says, “What made you bring it?” and Zach answers, “I just wanted to I thought it was nice we all stayed together here remember?” (Bissinger, 217).

This is the point where Buzz accepts that he may never know how his son’s mind works.  It’s a cathartic moment for him.  Zach clearly has a sense for emotional closure but it doesn’t work the same way as Buzz’s.  Buzz reacts by thinking of his own parents and their mutual need for each other.  He realizes that he and Zach need each other in the same way.  He will continue to take care of Zach for as long as he can because this is his son, no matter how different.

He sums it up by reminding the reader, “It was said of Zach during the trip that he has a sixth sense for sincerity.  But he also possesses a seventh sense of saying the right words at the right time even if he doesn’t know why they are the right words.” (Bissinger, 235).  Admitting that he doesn’t understand is a huge step for Buzz.  He finally gets it that Zach is a complete person no matter how damaged.  He’s working to get by in the world just like everybody else.

By Rosie

Dear Readers, I started my foray into the world of vampires as a young and tender lass of twelve.  I suppose technically I think I read a Bunnicula book when I was eight or so, but I don’t really remember and anyway, Bunnicula was a rabbit.  It doesn’t count.  Back to the point - I started with Anne Rice.

I was a voracious reader at a young age, and I had actually tried to read Queen of the Damned when I was nine or ten.  My mother stopped me and told me that I wouldn’t understand it, and should read it when I was older.  She was, of course, entirely correct.  Anne Rice writes difficult books, and I simply didn’t have the experience or sophistication to appreciate her quite yet.  In seventh grade I was a world-weary almost-teen and I was definitely ready.  I read The Vampire Lestat first, even though it’s technically the second in the series.  It didn’t matter.  I was hooked.

Anne Rice is a sensual writer, (so much so that she has written straight-up erotica under a pen name), and she made vampires sexy.  I hadn’t read Dracula yet so I had no idea what literary baggage vampires might carry with them.  As far as I was concerned they were beautiful, deadly, occasionally amoral and frequently religious, and totally fascinating.  Rice tells her stories with a focus on character and history, which is something I haven’t encountered much in other vampire books.  Since her main characters are the vampires themselves, not humans interacting with vampires, she gets to play with a really long timespan.

The character of Lestat snagged me initially, but as I tore my way through her entire catalog of books the way she interacted with history was what kept me coming back for more.  Anne Rice’s true originality is that she gives you hundreds of years of history through the perspective of one character.  In my ten years of reading vampire fiction, I have yet to discover another book or author who does this successfully.

Eventually I did get bored with her.  There are a lot of things to be said about Anne Rice and one of them is that when you read fifteen of her books in a row they start to get repetitive.  This is probably true of just about any author.  There’s only so much tortured sexual bloodletting I can get my head around in a month.  So much for Anne Rice.  I didn’t want her, but I was still totally hooked on vampires - or at least what I understood vampires to be.  Unfortunately for me, I hit this point about a week after Twilight was released.

At the risk of sounding really hipster, I probably read Twilight before you.  I definitely read it before it got famous.  Like Harry Potter, Twilight took a little while to really hit the mainstream.  I happened to be looking for vampire books just as it arrived, so I snatched it up and read it immediately.  I was a freshman in high school, about fourteen.  Twilight knows its target audience.  I swooned.  I dreamed.  I loved it.  I read it over and over.  At about the fifth reading I realized that it was total crap and didn’t compare in any way to Anne Rice.  Sparkly vampires?  Seriously?  Even Rice, who writes pretty sympathetic undead characters, manages to make them menacing at least half the time.  The Cullens just aren’t scary.  Sorry.  Carlisle is a doctor for chrissakes. 

I could probably write you a dissertation on all the things I dislike about Twilight, but the only relevant one right now is that these were not the vampires I was looking for.  It did put me in a suitably angsty mood though, so I reread Amelia Atwater-Rhodes’ books for fun.  I had read In the Forests of the Night when I was thirteen, which is, coincidentally, the same age she was when she wrote it.  I still have a serious soft spot for her.  Her early books aren’t particularly deep or meaningful, but they’re still a lovely little insight into the mind of a bored, angsty, somewhat counterculture thirteen-year-old girl.  Parents with rebellious teenage daughters should read her.  They might learn something.

Back to vampires - this was the point where I gave up and read Dracula.  I don’t know why I resisted for so long.  I’d seen the movie with Gary Oldman and enjoyed it.  Dracula pretty much set the canon for every vampire book that followed it.  It’s an important book to read if you like vampires, or horror, or fantasy.  I read it and all of a sudden my perception of vampires changed drastically.  Bram Stoker’s vampires are evil.  Like, seriously evil.  Dracula can turn into a bat, or a fog, or a wolf/dog and he really likes nubile virgins.  He’s still a highly sexual character (he sort of collects brides after all) but it’s bad sexuality, which I was not expecting.  There’s a lot of repression and Victorian stigmas about bodies and sex and fidelity in there that I didn’t understand at the time. 

Anne Rice and Amelia-Atwater Rhodes used vampires as main characters.  They were dark and occasionally scary, but they were also mostly the good guys.  Bram Stoker never even suggests that redemption might be possible for Dracula.  He is evil, he has no soul, and he must be destroyed.  The fact that he is a highly sexualized fantasy for the women of the story just makes him worse.  Mina and Lucy experience two different sides of his sexuality, proving him to be an emotionally complex character as well as a demon.  Suddenly the world of vampire literature actually became literature for me, not just escapism and indulgence.  Anne Rice took one aspect of Stoker’s vampires and expanded upon it, making them hypersexual and introspective.  Atwater-Rhodes took the same aspect and simplified it.  Stephenie Meyer took a flying leap off a cliff of Mormonisms and came up with glitter and abstinence.  Dracula was a complete vampire in a way that I hadn’t seen before, and it totally spoiled me.  Vampires are just way more interesting when they’re actually evil.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova could be read as a companion piece to Dracula.  It’s really a historical fiction more than a fantasy book.  Dracula himself is pretty much exactly as he appears in Bram Stoker, but Kostova focuses intently on the history of the man Vlad Drakul, the bloodthirsty Prince who actually appears in history.  The Impaler is known for massacring huge numbers of people by sticking them on pointed stakes and leaving them to die slowly.  This guy allegedly incurred the wrath of God and was cursed to live forever by drinking the blood of innocents.  Stoker got the idea for Dracula from these legends, and Kostova develops the same story into a rich tapestry of history and horror.  Her book was scarier to me than Stoker’s, because it’s written like a history book.  It feels true.  You absolutely cannot tell which parts are fact and which are fiction.  On the other hand, it’s kind of dense and hard to get through.  You really have to be down for absorbing the history part.  She’s not messing around.  I love The Historian but it’s not a book I recommend for the fainthearted.  It’s a fabulous addition to the vampire canon and I think any true vampire aficionado should read it, but it’s not for everyone. 

When I found Sunshine I fell in love.  Robin McKinley was already one of my favourite authors and now she was writing vampires?  Swoon.  And her vampires are super evil, the kind of evil that means they’re going to take over the world in a hundred years.  They’re the kind of evil that gets inside your mind and can’t even speak words that reference the sun.  They are also completely nonhuman.  Even Dracula can pass for a human occasionally, but McKinley writes vampires that are so alien you can feel them there even when they’re quiet.  They have no human traits.  They don’t even live in the same plane of existence.  Her vampires live in a kind of otherspace that coexists and overlaps with the human world, but also slides diagonally through and wraps around it and encompasses several more dimensions than we are used to. 

Sunshine doesn’t neglect the sexuality of vampires either.  There’s a two-page kiss scene that is possibly the sexiest thing I’ve read in a vampire book ever, and it ends in a completely satisfying way that leaves all the ends dangling.  Constantine, the major vampire character, shows definite signs of falling in love with the main character, Sunshine, over the course of the book.  She is definitely attracted to him but there’s an added dimension of ‘this can’t happen because vampires and humans just aren’t compatible.’  It makes for a lot of tension in the story, particularly because she also has a human lover with whom she shows no signs of falling out of love.  If you’ve read Dracula you may see some serious parallels.  

Robin McKinley took an aspect of Dracula - that of an evil vampire fascinated by a human - and rewrote it.  She expanded it and gave it depth.  Anne Rice focused on sex, Robin McKinley focuses on humanity.  Sunshine has to deal with a relationship with a creature that might kill her at any moment.  The book is surprisingly thoughtful.  It deals more with evil as a concept than Dracula does.  It also features as a main character a bitchy baker who just wants to make elaborate desserts for the rest of her life.  It’s more sensual than any vampire story I’ve ever read.

I love vampire literature.  I think the recent pop-culture trend towards vampirism is, like the undead, both wonderful and terrible.  I like that vampires are getting a lot of attention, because they’re fascinating and I think they deserve a lot more serious analysis than they get, but I don’t like the kind of vampire that keeps getting portrayed.  We’re not seeing the Constantines and the Draculas in vampire TV, we’re seeing the Edwards and the Aubreys.  We’re not seeing evil.  Maybe I’m complaining unnecessarily, but I just don’t like flippant vamps.  In my head vampires are all tied up with Victorian sensuality, and I want to see that portrayed, not angsty faux-goth love affairs with eyeliner.  I hope pop vamps lead people to the real meat of vampire literature.  I hope at least a few get addicted and go hunting for the heart’s blood of the genre.  I hope they find these books and sink their teeth in.  I hope they understand the struggle with evil.  I hope they find the literary merit of vampires.