Beth H. (suburbanalien) reviewed on 10/11/2009 + 63 more book reviews

I did not like the book at all, but to be honest, I am probably not the target audience. I have not seen the series on HBO or actually any TV vampire shows, not even Buffy or Angel, or any of the others out there. I'm not into this whole new direction that vampires seem to be going. I guess I'm an old fuddy-duddy, but I don't think of vampires at all the way this book does. My entire history of vampires goes like this: in the 70's, there was Count Chocula breakfast cereal, and The Count from Sesame Street; in the 80's there was The Lost Boys and I had many years in a row dressing up as Morticia; in the 90's there was From Dusk Till Dawn, many Anne Rice novels and a movie called Interview With the Vampire, plus another fantastic movie called Bram Stoker's Dracula, and a less fantastic series but still true to the old-school vampire rules Blade trilogy; then in the early 2000's there was the whole Underworld series which was great, Van Helsing, and what to me was the best vampire movie ever Rise with Lucy Liu. In the vampire stories and movies I've liked, the vampires are violent, scary, murderous cursed demonic bloodthirsty beings who don't play well with others. In this book, vampires are pretty much reduced to a threat level of the annoying neighbor who stays up too late and has weird people visit at all hours. I don't get this new characterization, and I haven't seen Twilight, and I have no desire to. The reason I got this book was because I heard about the series on HBO, which I have not seen, and I wanted to read the first book before watching the series. Now, I'm not going to bother. I like the old-school vampires, scary and antisocial, the stuff of good ghost stories. Maybe there's a new generation out there who wants their own friendly pet vampire boyfriend, but if you prefer the old school terror and violence, you're better off watching Rise and reading Anne Rice again.

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