Return of the Vampires

Here are 3 sequels to big vampire novels. (By big I mean you're likely to hear of them even if you're not a paranormal reader - two of them are also big as in hefty, but that's a good thing.)

Justin Cronin's The Twelve is the second in The Passage trilogy. The Passage was published pre-Overreader, but trust me when I say that the night I stayed up until 4 a.m. reading it because Icouldn't put it down is burned like post-apocalyptic fire in my mind. (I ain't even saying so because I know the author. But I do know the author. It's not through him I got the advance copy, though - his publisher has me on a list from back when I did reviews for the Houston Chronicle. Still, I'm going to his launch party in Houston on Friday, so full disclosure on the amount of gushing I'm about to do.)

Anyway. I listened to the first book earlier this year, because I wanted to be caught up on all the action. Turns out I didn't need to, since Cronin starts with a clever and effective Book of Genesis-style prologue recapping The Passage. We're then thrown into the action, tracking various displaced First Colony residents, mostly in Texas, as well as going back to the beginnings of the viral outbreak that spread vampirism to start with. Here's the basic thing: while The Passage was a headlong hurtle, almost manic and full of terror and raw survivalist emotion, The Twelve is one of those conspiracy theorist's crazy rooms full of maps and post-it notes and yarn strung from one pinpoint to another. Just enough time has passed for the survivors to have established governments and routines, just enough is now known about what caused the Virals, that Peter and Alicia and Amy and the rest are forced to be politic negotiators as well as adventuring warriors. There is a lot about faith and prayer and higher powers, a lot about corruption and willful ignorance and the futility of acting both within the system and outside of it. Also, there are a lot of people being killed, loved ones being ripped away, desperate hopes for reunion, terror, sadness. So, yeah. It's great.

Also great, but about a very different kind of vampires, is Deborah Harkness's Shadow of Night. This is the follow-up to A Discovery of Witches, which I raved about when it was my 100th book last year. This begins where that left off - with Diana and Matthew, the witch and vampire odd couple taking the academic and non-human worlds by storm, leaping into the past so that Diana can search for a missing book of spells. Kit Marlowe isn't too happy to see her (he has a crush on Matthew) but Sir Walter Raleigh and the rest of the Elizabethans are helpful. Except the suspicious witches who don't understand her hanging out with vampires. And the demons who want to run their spy network without all the attention she's garnering. And the vampires whose turf she's invading. I loved how damned uncomfortable Diana found the whole experience: the clothing, the food, the role of women. She went from being a historian entrenched in the ideas of the time to being a participant actively excluded from engaging with those idea-makers, and watching her find her place in this world, especially when Matthew's vampire nature was let loose to shine in all kinds of new-to-her ways, was compelling. The setting - and ability to connect with his father again - also gave Matthew a whole cocoons worth of layers through which he had to struggle to emerge as a true husband and partner to Diana. Harkness handles both of their journeys with deep understanding of her characters and a fine grasp of how to make their time-jumped reality mold them individually and as a couple. I can't wait to see what she does to them in the final book of the trilogy.

These last vampires, I don't have so much to say about. Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse series is the basis for True Blood, which I've never seen since I don't have premium cable. Living Dead in Dallas is the second book, after Dead Until Dark, and I will say that it is much better written than the first. This series has a fun set-up (Louisiana mind-reader bar waitress meets and falls for undead local boy, much murdering and vendetta-having and bleeding ensue) and I didn't pick them up expecting great literature. Still, I found the first one clunky and badly edited, and those issues improved in the second. And stayed better in the third - so, yes, I'm a series completest, it's one of the reasons I've posted so little lately, since I've been reading more in series I've already blogged about. The Sookie books are easy downloads from my library, and I'll probably keep throwing them on the Kindle because, you know, why not. But on the other hand, now that I've experienced them and get the whole vibe, why? 

Friday the 13th

I'm not normally scared of Jason showing up in his hockey mask or anything, but I'm not above attributing bad stuff to the random coinciding of a number and a day of the week. Still, my Friday the 13th started off just fine, not like that one a couple of months ago when I spent 4 hours being audited by the Department of Public Safety. I'm enough over the jet lag (just back from visiting my mother-in-law) that I finally felt like I'd had a good night's sleep. It wasn't, for once, storming like - well, like Houston in July - so I was able to make my commute using actual visibility instead of sense-memory to guide me down I-10. I started a new paperback while on the treadmill, and almost, but didn't quite, lose my awesome Butterfly Creations bookmark when it fell onto the machine and rolled inexorably along the gap between belt and side rail before safely hurtling itself onto the floor behind me.

So after I finished treading and marked my place in Sherry Thomas's Beguiling the Beauty (which I'm happy to say I had fun with - I'd read good things at SBTB, but am on-again-off-again with her work), I headed to the gym showers. (Oh, gym showers. Nothing against the showers themselves - my hair has a very peculiar affinity for their foamy wash and conditioner - but even after 2 months of regular attendance, I'm just no closer to comfort with the whole blase nudity thing. There is just no reconciling my writing and reading matter with my prudish nature.)

So I retreated to a corner, attempting to dry myself while remaining somewhat covered with towels, and in the process managed to totally forget that I had dropped the drawer of my desk on my toe the night before when I was rearranging my study. Oops. Ouch. Ouch, ouch, quadruple ouch. Drying my toes has never been more painful. The middle one, in particular, was nothing but a mess of purple and black bruises. But I am, as you may not know, a very stalwart individual, and I limped off to work with barely a wince or a moan or a 'take pity on me, strangers, can't you see my pain?' histrionic.

And then at work, I was doing my most audio-friendly tasks (entering numbers from pieces of paper onto the computer. It's a lot of what I do, hence a lot of audiobooks at work for me) and was, despite my pain, very excited to start Deborah Harkness's Shadow of Night, her follow-up to A Discovery of Witches. It captivated me from the get-go, and I fleetingly thought that by taping and icing my toes, and enjoying this narration, my day would turn out just fine. No lurking chainsaws anywhere. But then... my MP3 player died. Well, as it turns out, it was just in a coma, but still, I had to go so very long, through so many papers, before it revived.

May as well have been in a cabin in the woods with no power and a psycho killer lurking outside.

I was still limping, wincing, moaning, and bruised on the way home, so I had it checked out - a sprain (I do have super-strong bones as well as a vast store of forbearance against pain. Or at least one of those things.) More tape, more ice, plenty of time to read while I waited for the x-rays to be analyzed. I staunchly persevered. At home, I couldn't walk the dogs like they wanted, but I curled up on the sofa and finished the Thomas book, sort of went to bed on time, and got up on Saturday expecting a nice, lazy, Jason-free day. Ha.

I mentioned the storms, right? Well, before the storms moved in for the day, the doorbell rang. It was a clear morning and no longer Friday the 13th, so answering to the stranger outside was okay. It was just the power company's tree trimmers. They come by frequently, since the neighbor I share a back fence with has masses of fast-growing bamboo under the power lines. (In case you're planning to landscape your yard, let me advise against this. It may do a good job of hiding an unsightly fence or wire, but it also tends to result in lots of disconcerting explosive popping and brownouts.) I let them into the back yard and went about my day. Just as the rain was starting, my internet went out. So did my tv reception. So did my phone line.

And then the thunder, and the pounding rain.

And let's not forget the people in my back yard with chain saws.

(To be fair, although they did idiotically cut the line to my phone box - which also holds those other services - they did pack up the chainsaws and go home when the thunder started.)

And then the power went out.

So I'm alone in the house, in the dark (-ish, it was noon) with no power (thank goodness my Kindle was charged up), no landline (my mobile was charged, too), no protection (okay, the dogs are giant and bark plenty, but would they really rip through a hockey mask for me? I've seen no proof of that to date.) And I'm limping.

(This was not a good time to start reading a book about being stalked by a mass murderer. Just a friendly tip from me to you.)

The power did come back on quickly, which is a good thing, because I've been eating a lot of frozen meals to avoid cooking for one and doing dishes while I await my family's return (tomorrow. Yay!) (Did I mention that our dishwasher is broken? Yes, my life, it is truly difficult.)


This sorry state of affairs continued through today, when the phone guy made it out (doorbell, stranger, back yard, repeat) to replace the line, which took the poor guy hours. At least he arrived after the daily rain storm. And although I discovered that I can't access any recorded tv content without a working phone/net line, I also discovered that Clark Gable and Colin Firth DVDs are very delightful company for lonely, limping me.

Better than Jason, anyway.

100 Books

On Tuesday I finished my 100th book of the year. (!) (Cue balloons and party horns.)

(I kept thinking I would get there sooner, so I kept not posting, waiting for this, and then I had no time until now. Sorry to keep all of my beloved devoted readers hanging.)

One thing about blogging the books (and even just keeping the spreadsheet of them) is that I do have a better recall on them - even the ones I don't write about. So whatever you beloved devoted readers are getting out of reading me (and thanks for reading!), I'm very happy to have been doing this for the past few months. I love to read just to read, but I also relish the firmer grip I have on the books that entrance me as I go.

And oh, I've been enchanted lately. The 100th book was Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches. Three cheers for this one, seriously, y'all. Not Harry Potter, not Twilight, not The Passage - an entirely different, delightful, devotee-making world of witches, vampires, and humans. (Hey, I just looked at Harkness's bio on her website - she loves libraries and librarians. No wonder I feel such kinship with her work and admiration for the world she created. Oh, and a huge amount of the novel is set in the Bodleian, so....) The basics: Diana is a witch with a strong pedigree, but she tries to turn her back on her personal history while pursuing her human-adjacent career as a historian. While working at Oxford, she runs into Matthew the scientist / compelling vampire. And some other witches and demons and vampires. But you know what? Forget all of that - the creature element is intriguing and adds depth, but this is really about history, and history repeating itself, and secrets and politics, and traditions and the breaking of them, and love - family love, forbidden love, love of books and wine and passion. It is beautifully constructed and beautifully paced and beautifully voiced and a great novel to act as the marker of my 100-book moment. More, Harkness, more! Write faster!

The 99th book was about 1/5 the size, but it packed its own punch. Alain de Botton's A Week at the Airport is, as it says, his account of spending a week living at Heathrow's Terminal 5, as their Writer in Residence. (It was sponsored by BA, so this is promotional material, but de Botton is so wry and wide-ranging that seeing the airport through his eyes is, well, eye-opening. It doesn't feel manipulative, just fascinated.) As I said, it's a slim slim volume, and has lovely full-color photos on every page, so it's a quick read. But de Botton clearly enjoys getting to talk to the head of the security team and touring the runways and sitting up late in the airport hotel bar with weary travellers and conference-goers. His vignettes are as much about the nature of coming and going, the history of transport and exploration, as they are about that divorced dad meeting his young son at Arrivals. Next time I'm in an airport, I'll be viewing it differently (and with more sympathy for the TSA dudes, too.)

I also recently finished the first in a YA trilogy by Kristin Cashore - Graceling. (And Fire, too, actually, but that was after the 100-book mark.) It is a very other-world world she's created, where some in the Seven Kingdoms are born with Graces, which give them super-human powers that the kings love to control. So there are great chefs, or horse-tamers, or, in this case, fighters. And as you can imagine, giving an absolute monarch control over someone who, even as a little girl, can kill or maim dissenters doesn't always work out well for dissenters - or the Graced girl. So, there are allegiances and travels and moral quandaries and love and intrigues galore. It's all very well done, and if you or your teenage daughter like fantasy, this is well worth a look. I hope the next one is out before too long.