Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

Which author’s writing surprised you when you first read their work and what about it grabs you?

Okay, there is something that all of you should know about me. Are you ready? This is my grand confession…

I am a vampire book snob.

There, I said it. It is out in the open and I can’t take it back. All of you now know my terrible truth.

You see, it all began in the year 1994 when my mother took me to see the motion picture version of one of her favorite books Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice. Entranced can’t even begin to explain what I felt when I watched the sophisticated, sensual, elegant vampires gracing the large screen of the small Ft. Monroe military base supplied theater, which was probably there before the Civil War AND the slave contraband decision. I had always thought vampires to be pallid, disgusting creatures. Like animals, I would say. Yet when I saw Lestat and Louis in their Frenchman clothing, vampires became something new to me.

I became and still am completely in love with the Vampire Chronicles (Marius is the end all and be all of literary characters in my mind and heart).

It made me a snob.

As a result, it is very hard for me to even pick up a vampire book. I’m close minded. I worry that the vampires within the pages won’t live up to my expectations. I don’t want them to be gothic cliches and I don’t want them to be full on beasts a la 30 Days of Night.

But, upon many recommendations, I decided to give the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris a try. Everyone said that they were great and the show True Blood was interesting. It was just that previously, I had read the back of the first book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries and thought to myself, “oh man, some superhero telepathic waitress and vampires ‘out of the coffin.’” It just sounded like one of those Mary Sue, vampire cliche books that I wanted so desperately to avoid.

With much trepidation, I opened up the first book.

And LOVED it.

Oh man did I love the book. I am a full fledged fan of the series now. I have learned that I can love sophisticated, elegant vampires, but I can also love your normal, sometimes country, very human in nature vampires. Where Anne Rice is elegant and reads like prose, Charlaine Harris is witty and down to earth but no less talented. The characters in the Sookie Stackhouse novels aren’t grandiose or extraordinary (funny to say when referring to vampires, I know). The world that Harris makes seems as if it could be real. I think that is what I like the most about Harris’ writing– when you real, you feel as if the things happen are possible.

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