No Twilight beyond this point. This is a new
recommendation post. I promised I’d do more, and then I promptly forgot. But
here is a recommendation list. This time I shall recommend vampire books,
because I couldn’t think of anything else.
I still don’t exactly know where I heard about this,
but I’m pretty sure I’m insane, because I feel like I’ve imagined where I heard
it. Anyway. It’s about a girl named Tana, and she lives in a world where
vampires have come out of hiding. And they sort of roam the world. Officially
they’re supposed to live in Coldtowns, which are fenced in towns where they
live. They use the power of the Internet to earn money. They’re really creepy,
and it’s really cool. And it rings really true. It feels very real and it’s
just so creepy. I loved it.
I feel like we can’t talk about vampire books without
mentioning Dracula. Luckily it’s really good. The end is a bit boring, but the
build up to meeting Dracula is interesting. It’s told in letter and diary entry
form. Mina and Jonathan Harker, and Lucy Wenstra record their meetings with
Dracula through letters and diaries. Jonathan goes to Transylvania to help him
buy a house in England. It’s very sort of insidious. And I remember getting
increasingly more desperate as Jonathan gets more desperate. It’s really cool.
This is the story of Pearl, who is a vampire, the
younger daughter in a family of old vampires. She is stabbed by a unicorn and
wakes up on her porch, and suddenly she can walk out in sunlight, she can see
her reflection, all those things vampires aren’t supposed to be able to do.
Naturally her family thinks this is a superb opportunity, because she can now
go to high school and bring teenagers to their house so they can hand them over
to old, impressive vampires. It’s a great novel. Pearl is a great character.
The book is very character driven. She is amazing. She’s snarky and sarcastic
and funny, and the whole thing is just so good.
This is pretty much the creepiest vampire book I’ve read.
One because the vampire is just really gross and horrible, and also the vampire
is a child. And tiny child-vampires are creepy. It’s about a kid named Oskar,
who lives in Stockholm in the early 80s. One day a teenager in his
neighbourhood is killed and drained of blood. To Oskar it feels like there’s
finally revenge, because the victim was his bully. And there is a new kid in
his building, who is revealed to be a vampire. It’s so much creepiness, and so
much awfulness, and it is so astoundingly good and awesome.
Second Dracula-book on the list, because I have no
imagination. It’s not so much about Dracula. It is set in Victorian England and
the queen has remarried, her new consort is Dracula, and she’s basically held
captive by the count. The book is about Geneviève Dieudonné, a vampire, and
Charles Beauregard, a human, trying to solve the Ripper murders. There are
vampires bouncing around, creating havoc, and Geneviève and Charles have to
interact with made up people, and historical characters. It’s really good, and
I should read the next book in the series.
The third Dracula book on the list. This is based on
the legend of Vlad Tepes, who would become Dracula. A lot of people, around the
world, throughout history, have found an ancient book about Dracula. They’re
all different size and thickness, but they are all about the same thing. The recipients
then feel the need to solve the mystery of the book, where it came from, about
Dracula, all that fun stuff. The main character, who I don’t think is named,
the daughter of a recipient, finds his copy, and realizes it’s connected to her
mother’s disappearance. And it’s really cool, and Vlad Tepes, or Dracula, is
sort of in the background, and there’s travel from Amsterdam, through Europe,
to the Carpathian mountains, to find her father, and mother. It’s really cool, and well crafted, and it feels real,
and one day I will reread it.
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman