Neil Gaiman‘s Newbery award winning novel about a boy being raised by ghosts and a kindly vampire guardian has been transformed into an edgier, sophisticated two-part comic that captivates and surprises on every page. Haven’t read the novel yet? No worries, you can easily pick up the full story from Russell’s lavish adaptation (He’s the same artist who created the Coraline GN). This time Russell invited a small army of talented illustrators to join him, and the results are phenomenal. I especially loved Tony Harris and Scott Hampton‘s version of The Hounds of God, which was my very favorite chapter from the novel and stars the stalwart, secret canine Miss Lupescu. The full color spreads bring the busy graveyard and surrounding community to glorious, riotous life and quickly help readers differentiate the living from the dead. The beautifully wrought Danse Macabre chapter that finishes off the first volume is not one you will forget anytime soon. Don’t wait too long to dig it up at a library or bookstore near you.
Category: Fanging Around
Teen Vampire Fiction with Bite!
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black
Imagine waking up after a party to discover that all your friends are dead—except your jerky ex-boyfriend. Tana can’t believe that somehow a pack of illegal vampires not only wiped out most of her social circle, but that they then left her sleazy ex-boyfriend Aiden tied to a bed as snack for one of their own named Gavriel. Tana ends up escaping the awakening vampire hoard with both Aiden and the weakened vampire Gavriel, but in the process is scraped by an errant vamp fang. Worried that she and bitten Aiden are now Cold (a state of blood-hungry limbo between humanity and full on vampirism) Tana has no choice but to drive them all to the nearest Coldtown–walled cities that legally contain vampires and the humans who feed them. There she becomes drawn into a dark plot to destroy one of the most powerful vampires of all time, while becoming dangerously attracted to the moody, broody, and quite possibly insane Gavriel. This complex, richly characterized horror show is no Twilight, people. The near future setting is a chillingly real amalgamation of high Victorian camp and social media mania where I could see the imaginary Coldtowns all too clearly. Holly Black takes the tired blood sucker genre and pumps it up to a new level with atmospheric writing like the following platelet passage that, well, if you’ll allow me, makes your blood sing. “The scent of it was iron and basements and losing baby teeth so her big-girl teeth could come in. It was skinned knees and Gavriel’s mouth on hers. It was smeared walls and staring eyes.†You’ll want to make this one your first back to school read when it comes to a library, bookstore or e-reader near you!
American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque & Stephen King
Fat Vampire by Adam Rex
What if your adolescent baby fat turned out to be a permanent situation? That’s our dude Doug’s issue. He’s fifteen and pudgy, and now that he’s been turned into a vampire, he’s destined to be fifteen and pudgy forever. He’s also dealing with his clueless best friend Jay’s complete lack of social skillz and an impossible crush on a gorgeous Indian exchange student named Sejal. And then there’s that nagging itch in his gums that says his fangs are out and it’s time to feed. The problem is, because of his lack of Edward-Cullen sparkle, Doug’s having a hard time getting close enough to a girl to kiss her, let alone take a sip from her jugular. So he’s reduced to sinking his fangs into the local dairy cows, but that’s like hitting Mickey D’s when you really want filet mignon. Doug’s gonna have to figure out how get some high octane Type O pronto, or his vampire a** is grass. Adam Rex’s first teen novel reminds me a lot of funnyman Christopher Moore’s paranormal comedies. I laughed my way through Doug & Jay’s serious awe at attending their first Comic Con (“…this goblin market at the nexus of all realities where a circa 1980s Iron Man and an original 1963 Iron Man and Naruto and Sherlock Holmes could all be waiting for the same bathroom. Would it convey the scale of the thing to know that there was a person who elected to dress as the Kool-Aid Man? Would it convey it better to know there were two?”) and their run-in with some hecklers at a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight showing. At first I thought I was reading a nerderiffic anti-Twilight. But Rex shifts gears about half way through as Doug starts to come into his own as a vamp. The jokes get a little darker around the edges as Doug tries to hold on to his goofy humanity as his heart relentlessly grows colder and colder. This two-for-the-price-of-one comedy angst-fest comes with an out-of-the-box ending that’ll either leave you shaking your head or cheering on Rex’s refusal to be nailed down when it comes to deciding Doug’s fate. Either way, I’d love to know what you think–please come back and post! (And can we give it up for what just might be the best cover art of the year?!)
Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez
Something’s rotten in the halls of Nighshade High, and to junior sleuth Daisy Giordano, it smells suspiciously like the undead! For Daisy, fighting the powers of darkness is nothing new—after all, her mother works for the police as a psychic investigator, and her big sisters Poppy and Rose employ their abilities of telekinesis and mind-reading respectively whenever mom needs some assistance. The only “normal†in the family is Daisy, who’s determined to show her sibs that she has crime-fighting talents, too—even if they are just your average surveillance-and-stakeout skills. Members of the Nightshade High cheerleading team are suddenly falling prey to a mysterious illness that leaves them wasted and, well, CHEERLESS. Prime suspect is head cheerleader Samantha Devereaux, who seems to have caught a serious case of O-My-Goth over the summer, trading her pink & green prepster duds and Jansport backpack for black fishnets and a tiny, made to order wheelie coffin. Has Samantha turned into a jealous vampire draining the cheerleaders of their vital peppiness? Or is there a more sinister force at work? To find out, Daisy will have to join the squad and date football hottie (and son of the police chief) Ryan Mendez—all in the name of solving the case, of course. And if she happens to fall in love on the way? Well, that’s just one of the unexpected bonuses of being “deadâ€icated to your job! This lil’ bit of fuschia-colored fluff was an enormously satisfactory way to wile away a Sunday afternoon, and chock-full of entertaining lines like these: “She was a soul-sucking vampire and I was a sixteen-year-old cheerleader, but I was damned if she was going to suck the life out of my friends. High school is hard enough!†It is indeed, but fun stories like this make infinitely more bearable. Follow the further adventures of Daisy and Co. in Dead Is a State of Mind
Night Road by A.M. Jenkins
Whatever you do, don’t call them “vampires.†Why, they’re nothing like those cartoon-ish pasty-faced blood-suckers who hiss and turn into bats. Cole and his crew may be immortal and allergic to sunlight, but that’s about all they share in common with the murderous undead who haunt every strip mall multiplex screen. Instead, they call themselves “hemovores,†blood-eaters who got that way from a “smart virus†that rewired their systems to crave hemoglobin instead of hamburgers. Quiet and subtle, hemovores revere the humans they feed on, realizing that they would soon die without their life-giving blood. Now Cole, who after centuries still hasn’t fully adjusted to the hemovore life himself, must teach newly turned Gordon how to get around after dark. The best place to do that is the open road, where a new town every night guarantees that no one notices if a feed goes wrong. Except Gordon’s not exactly the most cooperative student. And, despite the decades under his belt, Cole is hardly a patient teacher. So when these two take a road trip together along with Cole’s wise-cracking friend Sandor, nothing goes as planned, and before long these hemovores are on the run—from each other. A moody and broody look at what it means to live (and drive) forever, this is the perfect choice for that next long car trip with your parents that feels ENDLESS.
My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick
Somewhere in the deep woods of seventeenth-century Eastern Europe, Peter and his father Tomas, woodcutters by trade, settle down on the outskirts of a tiny village called Chust. Peter is grateful to finally have a place to call home, as most of his short life he has traveled from town to town with his alcoholic and silent father, who never seems to want to stay in one place for too long and refuses to give an explanation why. But as fall turns into winter, Chust is gripped with terror as bodies begin to litter the snowy landscape, bodies of friends and neighbors that have been horribly mutilated. Soon the suspicious villagers are whispering that maybe the murderers are the woodcutter and his son. After all, they are new to the village, and the killings didn’t start until after they arrived. Peter is frightened, but his father is strangely unmoved, calling the villagers superstitious fools. Does Tomas know more than he’s telling about the brutal murders? What followed Peter and his father to the remote village? And can it be stopped from fulfilling its bloody destiny? Peter believes the answers lies in the large, weather-beaten box that Tomas refuses to allow him to open–a box long enough to hold a sword…Brit author Marcus Sedgwick manages to write an entire terrifying historical novel about the mythological European origins of the blood sucking undead without once using the “V†word. His fascinating story is full of interesting tidbits of forgotten folklore, like the Nunta Mortului, or The Wedding of the Dead. If a young unmarried man dies in his prime, his corpse is “married” to the oldest village girl, who must live in isolation for forty days as she “mourns” him and is considered a widow forever after. A deliciously horrible ritual that I can only guess Sedgwick uncovered in his research of the oldest vampire legends of eastern Europe. But even if folklore isn’t your thing, how can you resist one of the best opening lines ever? “When he fell for the fifth time, when his face plunged into the deep snow, when his hands burnt from the cold but he didn’t care…the woodcutter knew he was going to die.” Can you say, “BRRRRRRRR!” times a thousand? This book screams to read, in more ways than one!
Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabe Soria & Warren Pleece
Romanian Lord Radu Arisztidescu, (vampire royalty in his country, but a seller of beer in ours) owns and operates the Last Stop quickie-mart. Keeping good help is hard, so Radu just bites himself a new undead employee when he needs a fresh pair of hands to unload the milk and rotate the hot dogs. Enter Dave, Lord Radu’s latest convenience store wage-slave, and reluctant vampire. Dave just can’t seem to get the hang of the bloodsucker-gig. He hates night shifts, and the sight and smell of fresh plasma makes him gag. So he spends his evenings ogling the hot Goth girls who frequent the nightclub next door, and snacking on Radu’s underground blood beer and beef jerky made out of you-don’t-want-to-know-what. He’s in love with a human Goth princess named Rosa, but between trying hide his pesky fang condition and fending off her other suitors, namely a studly vampire surfer named Wes and a bisexual human Goth named Alistair, Dave’s in over his hemoglobin. What’s a bat boy to do? Can Dave learn to overcome his Type-O revulsion in order to up his vampire strength so he can trounce muscle-bound Wes and win Rosa’s hand? Or is he doomed to an eternity of nursing his lonely heart while ringing up cigarettes and pulling Slurpees? It’s hard to believe that anyone could create anything new from the tired old vampire genre, but Abel (of La Perdida
30 Days of Night by Steve Niles, illustrated by Ben Templesmith
Think about this: there are places in Alaska that, due to rotation of the earth, don’t see a sunrise for at least a month in the very dead of winter. And this winter, the dead are going to take advantage of it! The underground network of vampires has discovered the small town of Barrow, Alaska, where for 30 days every year, there is nothing but darkness. It’s feeding time unless the very clever sheriff and his police officer wife can come up with a plan to outsmart the bloodsuckers. Fabulously gruesome and wonderfully gory, with blood that splatters across the page like a Jackson Pollack painting, this is NOT a graphic novel to read without every light in the house ablaze. I think I’ve finally found something that rivals Salem’s Lot as one of the scariest vampire books I have ever read. (But you can skip the movie–it sucks, and NOT in a good way!)
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
An Open Letter to Stephenie Meyer:
Dear Ms. Meyer,
In all the years that I have been writing Reading Rants, I have never received as much email about a title as I have about your debut novel, Twilight. Your story of star-crossed lovers, one human, one vampire, has been so embraced by teen readers everywhere, that they have let me know, in no uncertain terms, how extremely remiss I am in not having posted a review of Twilight on Reading Rants. So here it is, for those of you vampire lovers who haven’t already devoured it (and the voluminous sequels, New Moon, Eclipse, & Breaking Dawn).
Bella Swan loves the sun, but she loves her dad more, so she agrees to come live with him in his perpetually rainy abode in Washington State. There, she meets gorgeous, brooding Edward Cullen, for whom the rainy climate is perfect. You see, Edward and his family are all vampires and tend to turn translucent in sunlight (as opposed to shrivel into smoldering ash), which can be difficult to explain, hence his frequent absences from school when the weather’s fine. Luckily for Bella, who has fallen head over heels for the stunning bloodsucker, Edward and his clan only hunt animals, not people. But the teen lovers are forced to keep their ardent kisses in check, because as Edward’s Bella-lust begins to rise, so does his bloodlust, and the chances that Bella will suffer more than just your run-of-the-mill hickey. The two manage to balance their unusual relationship until a roving band of real bloodsuckers invades Edward’s family’s territory and threaten Bella. Can Edward overcome his natural desires to save Bella? Or will the new vampires cause him to cross over to the dark side? Lushly written and hauntingly atmospheric, you’ll want to follow up this read with Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, and The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause.
Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz
What if all the movers and shakers of the world, the billionaire power-brokers, the elite country-clubbers, the crème de la crème of high society – what if all those old school blue bloods were REALLY cold-blooded vampires? Reincarnated over and over and always passing down the power, these powerful Blue Bloods maintain their secret identities by keeping their human “familiars” alive and well by feeding off of them in shifts and perpetrating silly myths about garlic and crosses to keep humans in the dark about their existence. But now their way of life is being threatened by the Silver Bloods, an insane group of bloodsuckers who feed on other vampires instead of humans. Can the Blue Bloods be saved? Or will their secret be exposed and cause a Blue Blood/Silver Blood war that can only end in death and destruction for human society? De la Cruz’s imaginative take on the privileged upper crust, though a little convoluted, is nevertheless great fodder for the imagination. So THAT’s why those rich little debutantes never gain weight - they’re UNDEAD! Fans of vampire fiction will drink this one right down, along with it’s lip-smacking sequel, Masquerade.
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
Imagine this: you’ve just parked your car next to a quiet lake a few miles out of town to get some peace from your hectic job as the local whiz-kid baker supreme. Like, your cinnamon rolls are out of this world, man. But they don’t care about your baking skills. They don’t care, because they don’t eat. They only drink. And you don’t want to dwell too long on what it is that they drink. They surround you so quietly you never even hear them. And just as soundlessly, they take you away to a decrepit old mansion in the middle of nowhere, chain you to a wall, and leave one of their own chained opposite you. And now, it’s growing dark. And your fellow prisoner is slowly waking up. And he’s very, very thirsty…and if you think you know how this story ends, let Robin McKinley prove you wrong in this very dense, very surprising vampire tale.
Sweetblood by Pete Hautman
Chameleon author Hautman never writes the same book twice, and, in my opinion, never writes a bad book! And this original story is no exception. Lucy Szabo hates to be labeled. Just because she injects insulin a couple times a day, don’t call her a DIABETIC. So she wears black clothes and heavy black-eyeliner, doesn’t mean she’s a GOTH. Lucy’s sick of all the labels people give her just because they don’t understand what she REALLY is. See, Lucy’s theory is that anyone who depends on medical science to live, who would normally be dead without the help of penicillin or a pacemaker, is actually UNDEAD, or, if you like, a VAMPIRE. Lucy’s blood needs insulin, so it’s easier to think of herself as a take-no-prisoners-vampire instead of a sickly teen with diabetes. She even participates in a chat room with other pseudo-vampires, who claim to drink blood and shape-change. Lucy knows they’re all full of it–except the guy who’s screen name is Draco. His details about vamp life are so scarily realistic that Lucy, screen name Sweet-blood, thinks he might actually be the real thing. Does she dare meet him and find out for sure? Not your typical horror story, Hautman incorporates Goth culture, diabetes facts and vampire myths into a thought-provoking thriller that you won’t soon forget!
In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Thirsty by M.T. Anderson
Chris is pretty used to vampires–in his world, which is startlingly like our own, a vampire is just another common criminal that you hear about on the evening news: arrested for loitering in graveyards, driving while under the influence of plasma, and performing ritualistic murder. Yep, Chris knows vampires. That’s why he’s so concerned when he starts losing his reflection in mirrors and feeling very, very thirsty–a thirst water doesn’t even begin to touch. He thinks he might be turning into a vampire and is desperate to stop the process. Lucky for him he meets Chet, an angel-like guy with the Forces of Light who claims he can help Chris if Chris will act like a double-agent between the humans and the vamps for awhile. Only Chet isn’t keeping up his end of the bargain, and Chris fears that his future lies at the bottom of a coffin. This one will have you laughing uneasily and rubbing your teeth to make sure you don’t feel fangs…