I am soooo cranky today because I didn't get one second of sleep last night because this is what is happening to me right now:
The devil is having another disco party in my throat. Jerk.
I laid awake all night enduring the devil-throat party, and was bored out of my skull so I read my book, Dead until Dark by Charlaine Harris. It's a vampire novel that is supposed to be good; comparable to the Twilight series, which I liked, so I got it.
It stinks.
I recently finished Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was very good; SUPER creepy and scary. I thought Dead Until Dark would be a good read, but it is just bad. The writing is shallow and unimaginative, the main character is kind of a dud, and the plot is ridiculous. A brief example; one of the female vampires wears a pink spandex outfit with a men's white shirt over it. Please, I think we all know that if vampires are anything, they're fashionable, and no self-respecting vampire (and they are all self-respecting) would be caught dead in spandex. (get it, caught "dead"?)
Here's a brief summary: Sookie Stackhouse (oh how very original and alliterative!) is the main character. She is a young, super hot virgin living with her grandmother in Louisiana. She can read minds but doesn't like to because she can hear things she doesn't really want to hear, so she concentrates hard and she can block out other people's thoughts. She works in a bar as a waitress and one night a cute vampire comes in and gets accosted by a couple meth-head vampire suckers (vampire blood has medicinal properties for humans in this book, so is very valuable) and Sookie saves his life. (Uh, hello, does "undead" mean nothing?) She and the vampire, Bill, become fast friends and hijinx ensues. Yes, I said his name is Bill. Bill the Vampire. Sookie and Bill. Bill and Sookie. (what?)
I'm only about half way through the book right now and I think maybe I shouldn't have started it right after reading Dracula. Vampire fiction is stupid to begin with, but once you give yourself over to it, the stories are kind of interesting. Except this one. I find myself hoping Sookie and Bill ...... actually I don't hope anything for them. I don't care about them at all. I've heard that there are graphic sex scenes in this book, but so far I've only come across one laughable human-on-vampire handjob that was totally awkward and unnecessary. Nobody thinks a handjob is sexy. Nobody. In fact, sex scenes are hard to write and even harder to read. There's only so many euphemisms for body parts out there, and I'm kind of looking forward to/dreading finding out what Ms. Harris calls things. I'm sure there is a lot of heaving and throbbing, but is it a throbbing Member? Mast? Manhood? Stiffy? Harpoon? Wiener? I'm laughing already - Vampire wiener. I might have to write some purple vampire prose of my own.... hmmmm....
I'm going to try to finish this book because I bought it (dang!) so I kind of have to finish it now. Hopefully it will get better. But I doubt it. If it does, I will write a retraction to this review.
The HBO series True Blood is based on the Sookie Stackhouse series (there are eight books) and is supposed to be very good. Is that actually true? Have any of you seen it? It's in my Netflix queue.
The devil is having another disco party in my throat. Jerk.
I laid awake all night enduring the devil-throat party, and was bored out of my skull so I read my book, Dead until Dark by Charlaine Harris. It's a vampire novel that is supposed to be good; comparable to the Twilight series, which I liked, so I got it.
It stinks.
I recently finished Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was very good; SUPER creepy and scary. I thought Dead Until Dark would be a good read, but it is just bad. The writing is shallow and unimaginative, the main character is kind of a dud, and the plot is ridiculous. A brief example; one of the female vampires wears a pink spandex outfit with a men's white shirt over it. Please, I think we all know that if vampires are anything, they're fashionable, and no self-respecting vampire (and they are all self-respecting) would be caught dead in spandex. (get it, caught "dead"?)
Here's a brief summary: Sookie Stackhouse (oh how very original and alliterative!) is the main character. She is a young, super hot virgin living with her grandmother in Louisiana. She can read minds but doesn't like to because she can hear things she doesn't really want to hear, so she concentrates hard and she can block out other people's thoughts. She works in a bar as a waitress and one night a cute vampire comes in and gets accosted by a couple meth-head vampire suckers (vampire blood has medicinal properties for humans in this book, so is very valuable) and Sookie saves his life. (Uh, hello, does "undead" mean nothing?) She and the vampire, Bill, become fast friends and hijinx ensues. Yes, I said his name is Bill. Bill the Vampire. Sookie and Bill. Bill and Sookie. (what?)
I'm only about half way through the book right now and I think maybe I shouldn't have started it right after reading Dracula. Vampire fiction is stupid to begin with, but once you give yourself over to it, the stories are kind of interesting. Except this one. I find myself hoping Sookie and Bill ...... actually I don't hope anything for them. I don't care about them at all. I've heard that there are graphic sex scenes in this book, but so far I've only come across one laughable human-on-vampire handjob that was totally awkward and unnecessary. Nobody thinks a handjob is sexy. Nobody. In fact, sex scenes are hard to write and even harder to read. There's only so many euphemisms for body parts out there, and I'm kind of looking forward to/dreading finding out what Ms. Harris calls things. I'm sure there is a lot of heaving and throbbing, but is it a throbbing Member? Mast? Manhood? Stiffy? Harpoon? Wiener? I'm laughing already - Vampire wiener. I might have to write some purple vampire prose of my own.... hmmmm....
I'm going to try to finish this book because I bought it (dang!) so I kind of have to finish it now. Hopefully it will get better. But I doubt it. If it does, I will write a retraction to this review.
The HBO series True Blood is based on the Sookie Stackhouse series (there are eight books) and is supposed to be very good. Is that actually true? Have any of you seen it? It's in my Netflix queue.
I have never been a fan of vampire books or any sort of horror books. That stuff would keep me awake for sure!
ReplyDeleteI like the t.v show.
ReplyDeleteMy sister and I rented the HBO video's one night...WOW, can you say porn! We had to keep shutting it off every time her 16 year old son came in the room! We didn't want him to see all that with his young boy hormones raging!
ReplyDeleteI'm a Twilight fan myself.
OK, my sister is obsessed with Soukie. She likes it better than Twilight becasue Stephanie Meyer TOTALLY ripped off everything from Charlene Harris. Then she cleaned it up for a teenage audience. She says "Soukie books are like Twilight books on E"!! Yes, the TV show is racy. VERY. But most of that is not in the books, according to Kristin. They raced it up for Showtime. Season 1 is out on disc and Season 2 comes out in June I think. She also owns all TEN (10) books; the most recent came out just a few days ago. Oh and PS, once she gets over Bill, Soukie moves on to vampire Eric. Soukie and Eric. Eric and Soukie. Get ready for it.
ReplyDeleteI promise the books get better! I might be inclined to agree that after reading Bram Stoker, there's the risk that Sookie would require a severe adjustment in expectations. I, personally was almost... angry at the idea of having to start a whole new vampire series, and learn a whole new set of characters, and figure out how to care about a whole new storyline. I had just finished reading everything "Twilight" that existed. I read Twilight SEVEN TIMES. I read the partial draft of "Midnight Sun" FIVE times. I read New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn twice each. I had watched the Twilight movie close to 60 times. SIXTY. I had just finished seeing New Moon in the theater for the fourth time.
ReplyDeleteI was obviously in a very bad place.
I was despondent. My sister bought me the first 7 Sookie books in a boxed set for Christmas. I stared at them on the shelf, not wanting to leave Twilight behind. I didn't want to read Sookie and like it, at all. And at first... I DIDN'T LIKE IT. AT ALL.
But...
It did grow on me, and the story unfolded, quite slowly, I admit, and by the second book, I was hooked. I couldn't put them down. I had issues with all of the things you listed in your blog, at first. Then I started to laugh at some of those things, and I think some of them were actually meant to be laughed at. Charlaine Harris definitely has a sense of humor, but it's a Southern one, and not one I always catch on to. I am absolutely certain that I laugh at some things that she meant to be serious, and vise-versa. LOL.
So my two cents-worth are, keep reading... if you can! I am half-way through the 10th Sookie book, which was just released on May 4th. It's great. And Dana is right; Sookie doesn't stay with Bill - she has relationships with werewolves, an on-going flirtation with her shape-shifter boss, Sam, and eventually she does bed Eric the Viking Sheriff of Area Five. REPEATEDLY. The physical scenes are pretty well-written, but every once in awhile there is some cornball terminology that I can't help laughing at. So I do.
As a final comment, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the HBO True Blood Series. But they DO take a fairly liberal departure from Charlaine's books with that show. The creator, Alan Ball, takes a lot of liberties with the characters and he messes with the storyline a bit. I'm not sure why he feels the need to do it, (all in the name of ratings, no doubt) but whatever his reasons, the series is popular. And VERY racy, even for HBO. The best part is, he got the characters' actors pretty dead-on. Alexander Skarsgard is a PERFECT Eric. Stephen Moyer is British, but somehow pulls off "Vampire Bill." (Sookie even makes fun of Bill's name on the show,... HILARIOUS!) And if you can get past looking at Anna Paquin as the little kid in "The Piano" or "Rogue" from "X-Men," then she makes a really good Sookie.
Anyway... I digress.
A final note:
Another good humorous vampire-romance series are the "Betsy Taylor" books written by Mary Janice Davidson. This series is quite a bit funnier than the Sookie series, and it's set in the Twin Cities, of all places! It is also leaps and bounds raunchier. (With VERY LITTLE cornball terminology, thankfully! Quite graphic, in places.)
I'll be anxious to follow your reviews... Hope you find something good to read!!!
~ Kristin
Okay, I finished the book (finally) and only continued because I watched the first four episodes of True Blood and I really like the show. Anna Paquin totally makes the character of Sookie redeemable for me. I really don't like the vampires though. They are kind of dirty looking and ugly. I LIKE MY VAMPIRES SPARKLY!!! Anyhoo, the book wasn't so bad when I had the tv show actors in my head. I think I'll stick with the show instead of the books, but I FINISHED IT! My record is untarnished!
ReplyDelete