Book: Dead in the Family

Author: Charlaine Harris

Type of Book: Fiction, paranormal romance, vampires

Why Did I Read This Book: Because despite the fact that the cheesy Sookie Stackhouse series has increasingly made me lactose intolerant, I’m hooked.

Availability: Published in 2010 by the Penguin Group, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Oh, good heavens, this was a terrible book. Terrible, terrible, terrible. Horrible, even. And yet I know that I will be reading the next in the series the day it comes out in hard cover. It’s maddening. I don’t know what bizarre alchemy Harris has discovered here because she’s not even turning base literature into gold. She’s presenting base lit, I know it’s base lit, and I devour it like it’s gold. Almost all of the Sookie Stackhouse books are like this. I know they are American cheese but I seek them out like they are caviar.

But that having been said, the weird alchemy that Harris performs fell short in this book. Her past books were so much better. Where was this book’s equivalent of really steamy shower sex with Eric? Where was the equivalent of the bloody war between the Fairies? Where was this book’s exciting werewolf one-on-one battle for supremacy? Where were the “this book” equivalents of the antics that made Harris’ past books the sort of guilty pleasure I don’t mind admitting? This book was not even American cheese. It was microwaved cheez whiz that has been left out on the counter top with the lid off. The turgid plot lines are what reel me in and keep me reading but this Sookie novel did not deliver. It just didn’t have enough of the cheesy goodness that I long for when I read Harris. There were several subplots that never delivered the visceral, gleeful punch that one needs when reading Sookie Stackhouse tales.

Plot summary: Sookie and Eric still have undead Viking/insufferable blonde human sex and are still uneasy in their relationship and nothing gets resolved. Victor is causing problems and Sookie wants him dead and nothing gets resolved. Claude moves in, with no real point behind it. Sookie babysits her young cousin and nothing comes of it. Jason is still a were-panther but has settled down and Sookie goes to a pointless cookout with her brother and his new girlfriend. Werewolves find a dead body on her property and nothing gets resolved. Eric’s maker shows up with the undead Tsarevich and it’s ridiculous as well as pointless. Sookie finds Lorena’s other “child” and the book ends after this happens and we can only hope it goes somewhere in the next book in the series. There are some little bubbles of interesting behavior but overall, there are a bunch of subplots that rattle around and ultimately go nowhere.

This trend of Harris’ to introduce all kinds of intriguing subplots, like the presence of Hadley’s son, bringing new characters and situations into the mix in every chapter, dangling them out there, then doing nothing with them aside from revisiting them blandly and pointlessly, just telling little stories that have no impact on the plot or give any better understanding of the world Sookie lives in, is wearing thin. This tendency has got to be reined in at some point – I know editors may be reluctant to lay down the law to a proven money maker like Harris, but all these tiny subplots and all these characters milling about and not doing much are diluting the fun.

There were also a lot of continuity problems in this book. If a casual reader like me noticed them, any editor worth his or her salt should have seen them, too. I think as this series grows and with its popularity, there is increasing pressure for Harris to crank novels out. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for a quality book, but I wonder if that even matters. I mean, I am slamming the hell out of Dead in the Family but I know I will continue reading the series. I suspect it will take a lot more than one complete clunker with a bad plot and continuity issues to cause most of us leave Sookie behind in disgust but it would be nice if our unconditional love for this series was respected via tight story lines and excellent plots.

However much I don’t expect the most stellar of writing in the Sookie Stackhouse series, Harris did manage to create a plot line in this book so bad that I honestly have no idea how anyone could have thought, “Hey, this is a good idea. Let’s include this hot mess and no one will raise an eyebrow.” Eric’s maker, Appius Livius Ocella comes to see Eric due to all kinds of vampire machinations. And with him be brings Alexei Romanov, his newest “son” and Eric’s “brother.”

Yes. Alexei Romanov. The one killed by the Bolsheviks. The one whose corpse was exhumed and his identity verified via DNA testing. The one who was a hemophiliac, the doomed adolescent who was shot to death in a basement with his parents and sisters. That Alexei Romanov.

How does Harris explain away all the, you know, historic and scientific evidence that Alexei Romanov died and remained dead and was not turned into a the undead by an ancient Roman vampire? Well, you see, Appius Livius knew that when the mass pit of Romanov bodies were finally discovered, it would only be a short while until they found Alexei. So the Justin Bieber-aged vampire removed his bones bit by bit to recreate his skeleton. Poured acid on the bone fragments and burned them too. Lucky for Alexei vampires can regenerate bone and heal quickly. And that there is no DNA test for vampiricism. Or that 16-year-old vampire bones produced in fragments then burned and buried for less than 20 years looked identical to the bones of Alexei’s sister, who had indeed been buried for over 80 years. Or that the Tsarevich survived the multiple stabbings and the two bullets that were put in his head long enough to be turned into a vampire.

I didn’t really object to Harris’ prior use of Elvis as he is a pop culture icon of questionable gravitas. But it was a bridge too far in terms of common sense, believability and even good taste to resurrect Alexei Romanov, a hemophiliac whose life had been quite bad before he was killed in a basement and his remains defiled, as the new sex toy for an old Roman vampire. Bleah on the whole thing.

So, all in all, this was not a good book. But that won’t stop you from buying it and reading it if you are already hooked. Just keep your fingers crossed that editors with a keen eye, common sense and feel for plot whip Harris’ next Sookie Stackhouse offering into shape before we shell out $25 for the privilege of reading it.

Book: Already Dead

Author: Charlie Huston

Why Did I Read This Book: I had put this book on my Amazon Wishlist at some point, probably because it is about vampires, which are always relevant to my interests, and my very good friend Arafat sent it to me. I wanted to read it because the Washington Post had this to say in its review: “(t)his book’s core audience is among the young, the cool, the hip, and the unshockable.” And this folks, is why I review books myself and seldom pay attention to anything any established reviewer says anymore because as a middle-aged, uncool, really unhip woman I can tell you that this book ain’t all that shocking, in a pearl-clutching sort of way. Unless you have spent your life reading Jane Austen with a little Nicholas Sparks thrown in for modern relevance, this book is simply a well-told, nicely updated vampire/detective riff.

Availability: Published by Del Ray in 2005, you can get a copy here:

Comments: This is a book that should have annoyed me but it didn’t because Huston incorporates infuriating writing habits, cliched characters and plot devices in a such a way that they seem fresh and interesting. Moreover, he blends and recreates genre in a way that others have tried and mostly failed to pull off.

For example, I loathe hard boiled detective novels. I find the old school Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane novels to be emotionally flat, unengaging and tiresome but Huston takes this genre and makes it work in a manner I could not have expected before reading this book. Joe Pitt, a vampire private detective, is the main character in this novel and he embodies the sort of emotionally flat, badass, private detective who has a soft spot in his heart for the sweet but damaged Everygirl but gets sucked into a web by a gorgeous, icy, double-crossing dame. Except we understand why Joe is remote and somewhat tortured – he’s a vampire and as demonstrated in the book, one break-in to his refrigerator can cause his death. The sweet but damaged Everygirl has AIDS, and his vampirism makes a relationship hard, all the harder because he can give her eternal life if he wants but has no idea, in the way these sorts of emotionally stunted men can be, of going about it. And the icy dame is icy, to be sure, but also has a Chinatown-style problem that telegraphs to the reader that this is going to be bad news and will not end well, but forces us to want Joe to help her anyway.

I also loathe novels that refuse to use proper quotation punctuation, mainly because it has been my miserable experience that when authors do this, it is the only “innovation” in the novel because they are trying to show their indie cred by eschewing rules instead of relying on good writing. Not gonna lie, this book irritated me in sections because in passages filled with large chunks of dialogue, using em-dashes solely to indicate speech got tiresome and I lost the thread of back and forth. But it was not as intrusive as I initially feared. I would have infinitely preferred traditional dialogue markers not because I am a norm helplessly clinging to the old ways, but because it’s easier to read.

So in a sense, this book had a lot stacked against it from the beginning. But I read it quickly, enjoying it more than the parts of its sum should have allowed.

This is what I think I was looking for when I picked up the Ellen Datlow-edited modern vampire story collection that I panned. This is a modern take on the vampire tale, and zombies are handled in a way that makes sense to me (I am not a big zombie fan either – zombies themselves are seldom interesting to me, though certainly that is not always the case). In the novel, a virus causes vampirism, a need to drink blood to feed the “vyrus” that both holds the victims in thrall to their need for blood, but keeps them stronger and healthier when they do drink. The “Vampyres” in this novel have set up their own society in New York, each clan having inviolable perimeters and Joe refuses to join any clan, remaining a free agent who bumps around in the world of upper class Vampyres, radical rogues and absolute criminals.

When he is hired by a clan called the Coalition to find a missing girl who is attracted to gothic and Vampyre culture, Joe is forced to deal with “shamblers,” people who become zombies due to a bacterial infection that is transmitted a number of ways, including sexually. He also finds himself in a world of intrigue, where he is, of course, double crossed on a dime, and has to make uneasy alliances with humans and Vampyres if he wants to find the girl, deliver her to real safety and get out alive.

I think one of the things that won me over is that Huston gets goth culture right, or at least what I recognize as goth culture from my own experiences. Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box was not a bad novel, but his characterization of goth and death metal culture were way off (yo, they are two totally different things and really don’t cross over as much as one might think – the culture that gave us Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus is far different from the culture that lead us to Death and Cannibal Corpse). Writers mischaracterize these subcultures more often than they hit the nail on the head.

Amanda, the goth-kiddie runaway Joe Pitt is tasked with finding has the gothic emotional-nihilism-as-a-mask-for-vulnerability-down. The street kids Pitt deals with are more gutter punk, and have the wardrobes and musical references (Skinny Puppy for the win) to prove it. Having once spent years living in gutter punk or drag rat enclaves, I immediately recognized some of the kids in this book. It was a very good thing indeed to see subcultures represented so accurately.

While I have seen this book described as edgy or like a Tarantino film, I didn’t see that myself. While this is definitely not a typical pulp horror story or a sparkling take on vampires, the edginess in this novel does not come from hip pop culture references or hard core violence. I realize my take here may be rendered somewhat questionable because I am steeped in transgressive literature in a way that casual horror readers may not be, but the real edginess comes into play because Huston manages to weave a Spillane-type detective into a new version of the vampire (and zombie) mythos, creating a wholly new and well-conceived merging of genre. Perhaps the true edginess is that Huston made me like a protagonist I knew I wanted to hate, uses dialogue punctuation in a way that would ordinarily make me snert, yet gets so much right in this intricately plotted book that I loved it in spite of the ways I suspected it should annoy me. His characterization, plot management and eye to renewing the old in horror left me with much to commend and with so many writers attempting to recreate genre and failing, perhaps any sense of edginess in this book comes simply from doing it right. I will definitely read more of Huston’s work in the future. His novel Six Bad Things sounds particularly good. It is always fun to come across a novelist I know I am going to like and realizing he or she has a body of work already waiting for me.

Title: A Whisper of Blood: A Collection of Modern Vampire Stories

Author: Edited by Ellen Datlow

Type of Book: Fiction, short story collection

Why Did I Read This Book: I love short stories. I love short stories about vampires. I love Ellen Datlow. I saw this in the bargain section at Barnes & Noble and I love cheap books. (It seems like I love a lot of things, doesn’t it?) It’s actually a book that contains two books of vampire fiction Ellen Datlow edited, Blood is Not Enough and a Whisper of Blood. So really it was a two for one bargain book. How could I lose? So I grabbed it and saved it so I could read it close to Halloween.

Availability: Released by Fall River Press in 2008, it no longer appears to be in print, but you can get a used copy here:

Comments: This is a hard one because overall most of these stories were entertaining and well-written. Yet many missed the point entirely or I am being too strict in what I consider a modern vampire story. I tend to think it is the former. Many of the stories really pushed the boundary of what it means to be a modern vampire story and not in a good way. In a “this really has nothing to do with vampires in any way, shape or form unless one redefines the notion of vampire to have nothing to do with the concept of a vampire in a context in which vampires are recognizable” sort of way. Yeah. Seriously, that mangled sentence is the mental gymnastics one must go through to find vampires in some of these stories.

A vampire does not have to suck blood to be a vampire. Most vampire fans also do not demand a strict adherence to vampire canon in order to find worth and entertainment in a vampire story. But on some level, the vampirism cannot be so postmodern in its interpretation of vampires that an audience has to analyze the story to the point of banality to find the vampiric element and too many stories in this collection demanded that sort of analysis.

I’m not going to discuss every story in the book but I’ll hit what I consider the high lights and low lights.

The ones that did not work for me:

“The Pool People” by Melissa Mia Hall uses rape as a metaphor for vampirism and while the story is intriguing, the fact of the matter is, this is one of the stories that stretches the notion of being a vampire. A teacher being assaulted by students is horrific, not vampiric. This story stretches vampirism into a metaphor for all modern violence and in so doing, stretches the concept of the “modern” vampire to the breaking point.

“Dirty Work” by Pat Cadigan flat out is not a vampire story. Period. Full stop. It’s an interesting science fiction tale but it has no place in a modern vampire anthology. I did my best, I questioned myself and asked if I was being too literal in my interpretation and came to the conclusion that asking for some form of vampiric behavior in a story included in a vampire anthology is not too much to ask. It’s a story of a “pathosfinder” who is overwhelmed mentally by an empath in a futuristic world. This was possibly the most tiresome story in the book for me, 35 pages of not very much happening at all, just… I think the issue is that I am not a fan of this sort of sci-fi, especially when I encounter it in a book ostensibly about vampires.

Interestingly, one of the other stories that did not hit me right was also a Pat Cadigan tale called “Home by the Sea,” wherein people are dead in a sort of post-apocalyptic world but still move around. They’re not really vampires so much as they are sentient zombies. A wife has sex with a man who is ostensibly still alive and he gives her the gift of life. Again, sort of entertaining, but also again, not really vampires in any sense, even modern. Vampires take life, they don’t give it, and given the zombie-like nature of the characters, it was hard to see what the point was of the story exactly other than just existing as a horror tale. It works as a horror tale. It does not work as a vampire story.

The last story I speak of in the “do not want” camp comes from Edward Bryant, “Good Kids.” This one I just plain didn’t like. In it, four girls in night-time child care facility discover their caretaker is a vampire. They turn the table of violence on him when they encourage the rest of the kids in care to act with them in an ending with a TWIST. Bleah to red herring endings and double bleah to precocious kids who as a group don’t speak or act as any kids I have ever known.

Now with the complaints out of the way, here are some stories that were really quite good and met the criteria, at least in my mind, of a modern vampire story: