OMG, VAMPIRES!

I figured that since I went on a rant about zombies in my last post, I’d do the same about vampires in this one. And I just had to keep the titles the same, since it’s essentially the same sort of rant, just a different mythological creature. The reason I’m on about this one is more or less the same as zombies: they’re incredibly overdone, just not to the point of zombies. Also, Twilight. I’m not sure why so many people seem to be so into Twilight. It honestly doesn’t make sense to me, though The Oatmeal’s explanation of the phenomenon actually makes a lot of sense. To be clear, I have indeed read Twilight. While I didn’t find it to be the complete garbage that many of the people on the internet find it (it seems that you either have to be in love with Twilight, or despise it with the deepest fiery depths of your soul), I didn’t see the appeal of the book either. It wasn’t garbage, but it certainly wasn’t good either. I think it’s biggest crime was that it was boring. Not even boring enough to remember, just blah. When I finished the book, I had no desire to go on to read the sequels, nor did I feel like posting hate about it anywhere. It just simply was. And a book that doesn’t get any sort of emotion going just really doesn’t deserve to be read.

I will give Stephanie Meyer credit: she did inspire some people to go absolutely bonkers over her book. But it doesn’t make sense to me. Bella wasn’t a good character; when she wasn’t whining about how much she hated the town, she simply wasn’t there. She was a character who didn’t actually exist. Not to mention, she got the annoying “the heroine is perfect” treatment, where girls in high school who wouldn’t normally even be visible or would be teased (the shy ones, the clumsy ones, the nondescript ones) somehow become the most popular and well-known girl in school, and the object of every man’s desire. I don’t really like this storytelling technique in general (though, I admit, I am completely guilty of using it myself), but it makes even less sense with someone like Bella. But then, not only does she become the most popular girl in school, she’s also the most delicious-smelling thing that the main vampire has ever experienced AND he can’t seem to see into her mind. And then, later on in the series (as I’ve been told), she gets turned into a vampire and suddenly can do everything that these vampires have taken centuries to do and do them immediately. Essentially, Stephanie Meyer not only dismisses every single bit of vampire lore to this point (beyond the drinking blood bit), but she then dismissed all of HER OWN RULES when it didn’t fit her whimsy with Bella. THAT is what pisses me off about the series the most.

I don’t actually care if you don’t follow all the rules of vampire lore, as long as you keep enough intact and do it in a good way. Two of my favorite vampire books break several vampire traditions: Night Road (by A. M. Jenkins) and Eighth Grade Bites (I have yet to read the others in The Chronicles of Vladimir Todd because they didn’t exist when I first read EGB). I’ll start with Eighth Grade Bites. It’s a story about a young adolescent boy who’s just going into the high school type years and he happens to be a vampire. He drinks blood (can’t get nutrition from anything else, though he can eat it), is very sensitive to sunlight, can read people’s minds, has the sharp fangs, etc. He can go about in sunlight, as long as he wears heavy clothing and sunscreen, and his fangs only show up now and again when he particularly needs them, but otherwise he’s essentially a normal vampire. He differs slightly from a Dracula-esque vampire, but Heather Brewer came up with a very plausible explanation as to why he could do the things he could do. Sure, he happens to have  a nurse for a guardian who can grab him all the expired and unusable blood transfusions, but that’s one of those perks that comes with being a main character. Night Road is about hemovores; they don’t like to be called vampires. They burn terribly in the sunlight and they drink blood, but that’s about all they share with the typical vampire. They don’t have fangs; instead, they carry small, easily concealable objects that are sharp enough to pierce a neck to let a bit of blood flow. They heal quickly, so they can work out just a bit and become super buff really quickly. They aren’t killed by a stake through the heart, they don’t hear other people’s thoughts, they can’t turn into a red mist or a bat – this is why they prefer to not be called “vampires,” but “hemovores”  (like herbivore, omnivore, etc. They eat blood, so heme + vore = hemovore). This is probably one of my favorite books in general, and it’s definitely one of my favorite vampire books.

There’s only one more vampire book that I particularly like, and it’s more of one of my guilty pleasures. Insatiable, by Meg Cabot, is a vampire romance. It involves the heroine, a plain-looking young girl who can see the death of anyone she makes eye contact with, living in New York at her dream job, writing for her favorite soap opera, and the hero, the Romanian prince of all vampires, falling in love. And the war between the Dracul and Prince Lucien and the Palatine Guard, the Vatican’s secret armed force that protects the world from vampires. The book itself makes fun of all the dumb vampire crap and the complete obsession of girls over these beyond-romanticized mythical creatures, at the same time exploiting these things. It’s funny and self-deprecating and really, really good. Events and people intertwine in ways that you wouldn’t necessarily expect until everyone’s story is involved with someone else’s. I definitely suggest this, as it’s worth the read, but only for those who don’t mind the sort of soap opera feel of the book.