Review: A Taste for Red by Lewis Harris

Found via: A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Svetlana (formerly known as Stephanie) Grimm is a vampire. Or, that's her self-diagnosis. After moving with her family and forced to start attending Sunny Hill Middle School (after a lifetime of homeschooling), she changes her name, starts wearing all black, will only eat red foods (blood is impractical, but red foods are the color of blood, so it makes sense a modern vampire would adapt) and sleeps under her bed (a coffin would attract too much attention and wouldn't allow her to roll over in her sleep). Oh, she can also sometimes read people's thoughts - extra sensory powers are a classic symptom of vampire-ness.

Svetlana's diagnosis seems to be confirmed on the first day of school, when her science teacher, Ms. Larch, talks to Svetlana inside her head. However, when Svetlana tentatively asks for confirmation that they're both vampires, all Ms. Larch can do is laugh.

In addition to Ms. Larch's strange behavior, there's also Ms. Bones, the ancient next door neighbor, who's been spying on Svetlana. It turns out, Ms. Bones is a vampire hunter - and Svetlana is one, too. Ms. Bones is a member of a vampire (and other supernatural creatures) hunting group - but everyone else is too sick, injured, or possibly dead, to help destroy Ms. Larch. When three of Svetlana's classmates disappear, it's up to Svetlana to destroy the local vampire and save the day.

More than anything else, I loved Svetlana's dry wit and unique perspective throughout the story. For example, when at the carnival she observes:

Another booth sported a lazy-looking chicken locked inside a glass case. The chicken did math. Honestly it was the cruelest thing I'd ever seen. Why would anybody force a chicken to do math? Why was this allowed?

I feel the same way, Svetlana.

I was hoping this would end up being a little more girl-power-y than it ended up. It's set up that Svetlana and Ms. Bones are going to team up to take down Ms. Larch - but then Ms. Bones breaks her leg, leaving Svetlana to recruit two boys from her class to assist her. Svetlana does do all of the heavy lifting in rescuing her missing classmates, however - the boys think she's nuts but tag along anyway.

This isn't a reinvention of the vampire story, but it's certainly a great addition to the genre for younger readers.

Review: Pretty Dead by Francesca Lia Block

Found via: BBYA 2010 nominations

I've always had issues with Francesca Lia Block books. Not the stories themselves - the ones I've read I've always liked (including this one!); it's how the book looks physically that always irked me. Her stories are relatively short, and the books are small, and the text is almost double spaced...yet for such a small book I'm expected to pay the same price I would for a book like Liar? According to Amazon, Pretty Dead has 208 pages and is 7.2" x 5.3". Liar is 384 pages and measures 7.8" x 5.2". And yet both are $16.99 ($11.55 on Amazon). This is why I never buy my Francesca Lia Block books - I feel like I'm getting ripped off.

But maybe that's just me?

Anyway, reviewing the actual story now:

Charlotte Emerson is a vampire, and she has been one for a long, long time. She has travelled the world, seen the wonders of the world, as well as the attrocities humanity has committed. Desiring some semblance of a normal life (despite living in a mansion with an exotic collection of clothing one can only accumulate by living the equivalent of several lifetimes), Charlotte has most recently settled on the role of high school student, and befriended Emily, a quiet and shy girl who is almost homely compared to the otherworldly glamor that is Charlotte.

But after Emily dies of an apparently suicide, Charlotte begins to feel herself changing. She breaks a nail. She no longer thirsts for blood. She feels when she's near Emily's boyfriend, a boy who seems to have figured out Charlotte's secret, and wants nothing more than to be a vampire himself. Charlotte doesn't want to turn him, but then again, she doesn't even know if she herself is truly a vampire anymore...or something else.

Reviewers on Amazon seem to feel that this was written as some sort of reaction to how hot vampires are in literature right now - and if it is, so what? It's actually a pretty good take on the vampire mythos if you ask me - it really shows some of the tragedy of being a vampire, as Charlotte never ages beyond being a teenager yet everyone she knows and loves ages and eventually dies. She only has one person she can relate to, the man who turned her into a vampire, but who really wants to spend eternity with one person? Especially if that one person isn't what he first seemed to be.

There's also some lighter moments - Charlotte knows the myth that a vampire will burst into flames in the sunlight - it hasn't happened to her, but just to be sure she wears a high SPF sun lotion and long sleeves whenever she's outside. Then again, if she's nervous about that myth, maybe LA isn't where she should be hanging out?

It's also nice to a see a woman as the vampire for once - I'm thinking about all of the vampire books I've read and they're usually about young women attracted to the mysterious male vampire. As a human Charlotte is that girl, but that's merely a brief portion of the story; the rest is about Charlotte's vampire life, and how it seems to be unraveling. The mystery of what's causing her to act more and more human is interesting and definitely kept me guessing.

Review: The Dead Travel Fast by Eric Nuzum

Growing up, I watched horror movies with my family all the time. "The Blob" is possibly my mother's favorite movie of all time (we're talking the old school one with Steve McQueen, none of that re-make crap) and for several years running at Halloween we'd rent all of the classic monster movies for a monster movie marathon. Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mummy (the original with Boris Karloff, of course, though we also enjoyed the Brendan Frasier version), The Wolfman, Frankenstein and, of course, Dracula.

So in college when I picked up role playing with Vampire: The Masquerade, I already had a bit of horror/vampire background, and had a blast spending Thursday nights with my friends pretending to be among the undead (it didn't hurt that the man who was to become my husband was playing with us!). While it's been ages since I've stayed up till dawn pretending to be a blood sucking fiend, I still love a good horror story, and vampires are some of the most horrific of all (along with zombies). So when I came across The Dead Travel Fast, billed as a "far-reaching look at vampires across pop culture," I was excited. I love academic, or even semi-academic, looks at pop culture, so I figured this book would be right up my alley.

Alas, it wasn't to be.

While Nuzum certainly explores a wide variety of experiences in order to try to "understand" our cultural obsession with vampires, it's pretty clear that he actually has little but contempt for most of the people who find vampires fascinating. People who attend conventions dedicated to Dark Shadows are overweight, disabled losers who have nothing to look forward to but watching old episodes of a sub-par soap opera in dark hotel ballrooms, and people who play the afore-mentioned "Vampire" have a habit of going off the deep end and murdering people (two examples of Vampire: The Masquerade-related deaths are then conflated with half a dozen other instances of people who believed they really were vampires actually murdering people).

Nuzum's choice of what aspects of popular vampire culture to study were also bizarrely chosen. He wanted to watch every vampire movie ever made, yet tried to go throughout his entire quest without reading a single Anne Rice book. I think Anne Rice may be a few fries short of a happy meal, and aside from a brief stint in high school I never thought her novels were all that great, but there is no way you can study our current perceptions of vampires and ignore Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. It's like saying you're going to study our obsession with magic without reading Harry Potter, or pirates and not watching "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Essentially the verdict seemed to come down to that the only acceptable vampire obsession was Nuzum's own - and his obsession was more with ridiculing those who find vampires interesting and intriguing than actually understanding where this interest comes from.