Post by travellingfay on Oct 18, 2008 23:05:13 GMT -5
I did hate 'Twilight' with the passion of a thousand burning suns, but at the same time I can understand its insidious appeal for teenage readers. It still made me want to stake Stephanie Meyer with a sparkly marble stake, though.
Anne Rice (before she turned her back on sexy vampires, embraced the crazy and decided to start publishing Jesus Christ fanfic) wrote great old-skool overblown gothic stuff - very lush prose, properly scary vampires sans glitter.
Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' is FANTASTIC - stylistically, I love the fact that it's assembled from letters and snippets of diaries, and I also love the fact that it takes a scary old legendary monster and brings it into (what was at the time of writing) a very modern setting, and has its protagonists using (what was at the time of writing) cutting edge technology and medical break-throughs to deal with their foe. It's a shame to read it in a 'look at the quaint Olde Vampire Book!' mindset.
I quite like 'Blue Bloods' - it's pretty much 'Cruel Intentions' with vampires - and 'Vampire Kisses' is cute as a button (not least because the protagonist is ABSOLUTELY the ink incarnation of a good friend of mine).
I'm looking forward to Claudia Grey's 'Evernight', because she is a FANTASTIC writer and I can't believe it will suck (No pun intended), but it's not in my local bookshop yet.
Laurell K Hamilton is a very prolific, and exceptionally awful, writer of vampire books. I say exceptionally awful - in fairness, I enjoyed the first three or four Anita Blake books quite a lot. And I enjoyed the later ones too, but more with a sort of carcrash fascination. In the first few books, Anita is established as a strong, interesting woman with a fascinating and rather grisly day job raising the dead, and a sideline as a licensed vampire executioner. In those early books, Hamilton was still interested in plot, and Anita was quite engaging - I enjoyed her competence, the fact that she had to work to keep sufficiently in shape to do her job, the fact that she knew a lot about guns.
In later books. LKH decided she wanted to be Anne Rice, and Anita became nothing but a really dull, misogynistic Mary Sue. Now, Anne Rice writes porn (under a couple of noms de plume), but LKH writes BAD porn. LKH is no longer interested in plots, she's just churning out book after book of the Ongoing Adventures Of Anita The Wonderc*nt. From getting no shags, Anita has gone to screwing everything with a penis. Generally several at once. Generally every couple of pages. But is she doing this because she's sexually liberated? Because she's realised that she likes shagging, and has a taste for orgies?
No.
She's doing it because Magic Makes Her Do It. She is magically compelled to have hot, dirty, sweaty monkeysex with all manner of blokes, 24/7. Which - okay. Fine. But she's also gradually become the most stunningly attractive woman on the planet, and all other women are portrayed as jealous b*tches.
It's painful. And yet, with its terrible prose, awful characterisation and rampant misogyny, it still exerts a hideous fascination upon me. I know that at some point I'll pick up the latest ones in paperback, just to see whether Anita finally takes it up the arse, just to see whether she finally shags another woman. It's like a drinking game, watching her gradually work her way through all her various tabboos.
Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books are rather better, but they still set my teeth a bit on edge. I think it's the redneck whitetrash mileu, though, more than anything, that I find a bit unpallatable. YMMV. Harris is a pretty good storyteller, though, and she's much less self-indulgent than LKH.
Tanya Huff is probably my favourite writer in this genre, actually - I love the 'Blood' series, about Private Detective Vicki Nelson and her relationship with Henry Fitzroy, and I think I love the spinoff 'Smoke' series even MORE. (The 'Blood' series was the inspiration for a recent TV show called 'Blood Ties', which wasn't half bad.)
Carrie Vaughn's 'Kitty' series is a very likeable urban werewolf series - I'm much fonder of this than I am of Kelly Armstrong's 'Bitten'.
'Blood and Chocolate' is quite good - although, my lord, the movie is made of fail. ('Ginger Snaps' remains my favourite werewolf movie, with 'An American Werewolf in London' coming a close second.)
On a related note, Cassie Clare's 'City of Bones' is a great read, and Holly Black's urban fantasies 'Tythe', 'Valiant' and 'Ironside' are also quite fabulous. Not so much in the way of vampires and werewolves there, but plenty of strong female protagonists, scary magic and monsters, and sexy sex and romance.
Anne Rice (before she turned her back on sexy vampires, embraced the crazy and decided to start publishing Jesus Christ fanfic) wrote great old-skool overblown gothic stuff - very lush prose, properly scary vampires sans glitter.
Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' is FANTASTIC - stylistically, I love the fact that it's assembled from letters and snippets of diaries, and I also love the fact that it takes a scary old legendary monster and brings it into (what was at the time of writing) a very modern setting, and has its protagonists using (what was at the time of writing) cutting edge technology and medical break-throughs to deal with their foe. It's a shame to read it in a 'look at the quaint Olde Vampire Book!' mindset.
I quite like 'Blue Bloods' - it's pretty much 'Cruel Intentions' with vampires - and 'Vampire Kisses' is cute as a button (not least because the protagonist is ABSOLUTELY the ink incarnation of a good friend of mine).
I'm looking forward to Claudia Grey's 'Evernight', because she is a FANTASTIC writer and I can't believe it will suck (No pun intended), but it's not in my local bookshop yet.
Laurell K Hamilton is a very prolific, and exceptionally awful, writer of vampire books. I say exceptionally awful - in fairness, I enjoyed the first three or four Anita Blake books quite a lot. And I enjoyed the later ones too, but more with a sort of carcrash fascination. In the first few books, Anita is established as a strong, interesting woman with a fascinating and rather grisly day job raising the dead, and a sideline as a licensed vampire executioner. In those early books, Hamilton was still interested in plot, and Anita was quite engaging - I enjoyed her competence, the fact that she had to work to keep sufficiently in shape to do her job, the fact that she knew a lot about guns.
In later books. LKH decided she wanted to be Anne Rice, and Anita became nothing but a really dull, misogynistic Mary Sue. Now, Anne Rice writes porn (under a couple of noms de plume), but LKH writes BAD porn. LKH is no longer interested in plots, she's just churning out book after book of the Ongoing Adventures Of Anita The Wonderc*nt. From getting no shags, Anita has gone to screwing everything with a penis. Generally several at once. Generally every couple of pages. But is she doing this because she's sexually liberated? Because she's realised that she likes shagging, and has a taste for orgies?
No.
She's doing it because Magic Makes Her Do It. She is magically compelled to have hot, dirty, sweaty monkeysex with all manner of blokes, 24/7. Which - okay. Fine. But she's also gradually become the most stunningly attractive woman on the planet, and all other women are portrayed as jealous b*tches.
It's painful. And yet, with its terrible prose, awful characterisation and rampant misogyny, it still exerts a hideous fascination upon me. I know that at some point I'll pick up the latest ones in paperback, just to see whether Anita finally takes it up the arse, just to see whether she finally shags another woman. It's like a drinking game, watching her gradually work her way through all her various tabboos.
Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books are rather better, but they still set my teeth a bit on edge. I think it's the redneck whitetrash mileu, though, more than anything, that I find a bit unpallatable. YMMV. Harris is a pretty good storyteller, though, and she's much less self-indulgent than LKH.
Tanya Huff is probably my favourite writer in this genre, actually - I love the 'Blood' series, about Private Detective Vicki Nelson and her relationship with Henry Fitzroy, and I think I love the spinoff 'Smoke' series even MORE. (The 'Blood' series was the inspiration for a recent TV show called 'Blood Ties', which wasn't half bad.)
Carrie Vaughn's 'Kitty' series is a very likeable urban werewolf series - I'm much fonder of this than I am of Kelly Armstrong's 'Bitten'.
'Blood and Chocolate' is quite good - although, my lord, the movie is made of fail. ('Ginger Snaps' remains my favourite werewolf movie, with 'An American Werewolf in London' coming a close second.)
On a related note, Cassie Clare's 'City of Bones' is a great read, and Holly Black's urban fantasies 'Tythe', 'Valiant' and 'Ironside' are also quite fabulous. Not so much in the way of vampires and werewolves there, but plenty of strong female protagonists, scary magic and monsters, and sexy sex and romance.