Tall, Dark, and Fangsome (Immortality Bites)

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:06:00 +0000

Vampires are a dime a dozen these days. Everywhere you turn, there’s a new one ready to take your blood to prolong his un-life. Soon, there are going to be more vamps than humans, and then where will we be? (Read I Am Legend by Richard Matheson for the answer.) Between Twilight, True Blood, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, no human will be left unbitten, except that none of these vampires actually attack humans.

Tall, Dark and Fangsome adds nothing new to the decade old discussion of vampires. As we learn from Sarah Dearly, the unlikely protagonist, she is an Anne Rice-style vampire who likes dark makeup, blood in shot glasses at bars, emo, and brooding. Even Thierry de Bennicoeur, her ancient true love, is a standard vampire. Tall, Dark and Fangsome is the fifth in the Immortality Bites series.

Through the events of the first four novels in the series, Sarah has been given a nightwalker curse. This curse turns a standard vampire into the Nosferatu, the kind of vampire that (gasp) drinks blood from humans and enjoys it, because everyone knows that if you are forced to drink blood from a real, live human, you can’t enjoy it. Luckily for Sarah, her boyfriend has a convenient gold necklace that will stop the curse. She hates it because it’s so ugly, but without it, she’s likely to eat the first person she sees.

The main plot of this novel follows Sarah’s attempts to deal with Gideon Chase, a playboy billionaire cum vampire hunter who needs Sarah’s super-strong blood to remove his hellfire scars. In return for making him a vampire, he will give her the information she needs to free her from her ugly jewelry. Add in a Red Devil bodyguard, a vampire bodyguard with a penchant for standing in the shadows, a few meddling friends, and a teenage wizard with a love for death metal, and you have the plot of this novel, as well as anything vampire related in the last fifteen years. (Except Twilight, which doesn’t count since Edward isn’t a vampire; he’s a moody teenager.)

None of this would matter if the book was good, which it is not. It isn’t the worst novel ever written, but with no original ideas, the construction of the novel has to be perfect to carry it. This is far from it. The fantasy in Tall, Dark and Fangsome doesn’t equal a whole new world; there are just a few slight changes that don’t seem to affect anything. There are vampires everywhere, but everything looks exactly the same, except for the ability to order blood at bars. It’s lazy writing with little payoff.

I would love to call a moratorium on vampire books until someone has something new to contribute beyond "(s)he doesn’t want to be a vampire." If not, we’ll keep getting books like this; not bad, but filler in an already too full canon.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, January 15th 2010

Stakes and Stilettos

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:34:00 +0000

By Michelle Rowen

Hachette Book Group

I had never read one of Rowen’s previous books from the Immortality Bites series, but the idea of vampire chick lit was one that I couldn’t pass up. And I’m glad I didn’t! For the first time in a long time, I read the book cover to cover without putting it down.

For those who haven’t read one of the books from the Immortality Bites series, the story follows Sarah Dearly, a young woman who was bitten by a vampire on a blind date, and then is saved by a 600-year-old master vampire named Thierry de Bennicoeur. In the previous stories, Sarah had a rough time adjusting to her new life as a vampire, lost her job and her belongings, and was constantly sought after by vampire hunters after gaining the title “Slayer of Slayers.”

However, in an attempt to live a “normal” life, Sarah returns to her hometown with Thierry for her high school reunion, only to have a witch whom Sarah slighted in high school curse her to be a nightwalker. A nightwalker is a combination of the well-known vampire stereotypes: burned by daylight, lust for blood, superhuman strength, and the thrall—the ability to control a human’s mind. To add to her problems, Thierry is still in a marriage of convenience with Veronique, and she’s not willing to end the marriage, even though she and Thierry have outside relationships. Rowen does a great job of creating a complicated romance without falling into clichés.

Besides being a fun read, Stakes & Stilettos has some steamy scenes, especially when Sarah and Thierry are both driven by their bloodlust. The love scenes are tastefully done and move seamlessly into the next scene. Despite all of the misfortunes that Sarah endures, there is quite a bit of humor, lightening the mood so the novel doesn’t have a depressive tone. Rowen writes an excellent romance novel that is intriguing and a pleasure—without being a guilty one.

Written by: Elizabeth Stannard Gromisch, July 1st 2009