Supernatural Fiction Readers discussion

Jessie, what kind of help were you looking for here, exactly?

OH I found the answer and tried to delete the post. I guess it still kept the header, but not the content. Sorry about that. I was trying to find the name/author of a series about for teens about vamps that was chronologically titled by 8th grade, 9th grade etc for a friends son for Christmas. Someone got me the answer that was the Chronicals of Vladimir, 8th Grade Bites, 9th Grade Slays, 10th Grade Sucks. Sounds cute for boys where the girls all have Twillight.

Jessie, I'm glad you couldn't delete it. I read Twilight & didn't like it much. I think the reason is I've never been a teenage girl & wanted to kick the heroine on several occasions. I'd like to see how I feel about The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Ninth Grade Slays by Heather Brewer. Thanks!

That is great! Glad my searching for a christmas present may have helped you find a book too. Though you may want to start with Eighth Grade Bites first :)

I refuse to even read the Twillight series. I don't know why, but the whole thing just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. When I heard her about her adaptation of vampires it just really turned me off. I am all for authors taking new spins on old creatures, but to me, just my opinion, there needs to be some standards.

I work at a Borders part time, and the sales of that series just seems ridiculous to me. I mean, last week the publisher ran out of copies of New Moon. I kid you not ever other customer coming in was looking for the second book (I am guessing since the release of the movie now they all want to read the book, which is great, getting teens to read, but I don't understand the hype on this one) Then everyone was all mad when we have to explain that we have no idea when we are getting more because they need to be printed again. We can't get them till our warehouse gets them, the warehouse can't get them until the publisher reprints. UGH. It was just a nightmare. I hope we get like a thousand in the store so I can stop hearing all the complaining. I just kept telling people to try ebay.

Jessie, thanks for catching the correct book. I've added it to my 'To-buy' list as well as my BookMooch Wish List.

I thought Meyer's take on vampires was kind of interesting. I just didn't like the POV. The actual story was pretty good & I read it all. My wife & daughter both enjoyed it more than I did, so it's fairly well written. I'm not in a rush to get the next book, but they are.

The hype involved with some books is pretty incredible. I liked the Harry Potter series & feel a lot of gratitude that it was around to help my daughter learn to love reading. She has issues that put her in special education for reading. I bought the first Harry Potter novel at one of her book fairs & read it. Then talked it up enough that she gave it a shot. It wasn't long after that we had to pull a book out of her hand to get her to do other stuff.

Still, I was so sick of Harry Potter this, that & the other thing I could have choked sometimes. The book stores seemed to have nothing else in them! It was a horror.

Jessie, I don't hold any brief for the Twilight series, since I've never read any of it (I don't usually have strong feelings one way or the other about books I haven't actually read). But I was intrigued by your reference to "standards" for vampire fiction. Of course, the traits of vampires vary somewhat even in different strands of folklore, and the 200-year-old literary tradition is even more varied --but all those of us who read vampire fiction (and, in some cases, occasionally write it :-)) have our own definitive notions of how the Undead ought to be portrayed. What standards do you think a vampire author should meet in his/her depiction, to do it the way it should be done?

It's amazing how many different kinds of vampires there are now. I just read one where there's a head vamp who has drone vamps that he controls by mind, basically feeding off of them. The drones are pretty much mindless, bestial creatures. Can't recall that series or author off hand. Had a neat world where magic came back & the world sort of vacillates between tech & magic. She liked "Twilight" though.

Most other ones, like Fred Saberhagen's Dracula, are very much true to Bram Stoker's Dracula. P.N. Elrod also follows this. Others embellish it somewhat, like Anne Rice or Laurell K. Hamilton, creating elaborate societies.

I like most of them, but it comes down to the writing. I don't care too much how they change around the actual vampire, so long as it is consistent & logical within the framework of the story.

I didn't care for one I just read, the vampires were pretty much Stoker like, but they had a 'queen' who reminded me of Buffy - Queen Betsy series, I think. It was too 'funny' for me. A queen of the undead making major decisions who could be bribed by designer shoes. Yuck. The setting was good, but I don't care for the caricature of the Valley Girl as a heroine who stays stuck in that role.

My daughter, on the other hand, is particular about how vampires & werewolves are handled. She likes to stick pretty much with the basic Stoker Dracula type vampire & either Hamilton or Patricia Briggs type of werewolf. She didn't care for the book that had the vampire drones or those that have the original kind of ravening wolf-man creature.

Werner,

I am going to say one thing before I get into what my standards for vamps are. For starters, obviously I do not want every vamp to be the same, these stories would get awfully boring if it where they all were alike. That having been said:

FANGS: In order to be a vampire I think you need to have fangs. I know Meyers vamps just have "really sharp teeth". This also brings me to my dissappointment in the movie 30 Days of Night. These were more like Zombie's, not vampires. And they were just all decrepid and and a mouth full of razor like teeth. My vamps need to be somewhat coherent too. Not mindless just need to feed and rip things apart.

SUN: Vampires are known as "Creatures of the Night" So why in the world do Meyers vampires "shimmer" in the sun? That just doesn't do it for me. There have been some adaptations where they can go in the sun for short periods of time, but are weakened. That I can deal with, but over all Sun + Vampire + BAD.

Those are my big ones.

Jessie, when it comes to fangs and sun, you sound like you're a traditionalist, the same as I am. :-) Other things being equal, I prefer to read about vampires who fit the paradigm of vampire characteristics that we get from the folklore and the early classic literary treatments --and that includes sharp fangs, and inactivity in/aversion to sunlight! In some books and dramatic treatments, the fangs only emerge at certain times, when the vampire transforms to feed, and that's okay; but I think that just "really sharp teeth" would be a bit of a disappointment. I do like the modern view of vampires as free moral agents with personalities, not as automatons with appetites and cunning; but I'm pretty traditional in my tastes otherwise.

That said, though, if the storyline is good enough and/or the writing has other appealing features, I'm willing to sample vampire treatments that vary more from that beaten path, and sort of take them on their own terms. John Schreiber's "Me and Josh and Gideon" is one of my favorite vampire short stories, and Schreiber posits that while the older breed of long-active vampires can't survive in sunlight, the younger breed of modern-day vampires can. And two of my Goodreads friends are writing vampire fiction; in one of their treatments, the vampires aren't bothered by sunlight, and in both of them the Undead each have a special individual "power" (besides the usual ones of preternatural strength, shapeshifting into a bat, floating through holes, etc.). That's also an idea that takes a bit of getting used to, but I'm learning to cope with it! So, for myself, I'd still like to give Twilight a try sometime. It might not brook comparison with Stoker or Sheridan Le Fanu (though, actually, their vampires could have some mobility during the day), but it might still tell a worthwhile story.

Yeah, I thought the movie, Twilight, was much better than the book. It has much more vampire action.

I like twilight but feel it's overrated. The concepts in it are not groundbreaking and it seems cliche, just like every other YA vampire book i've read. The glittering in the sun thing was intersting.
I prefer, Anne Rice or Laurell Hamiltion vamps, where they are rational and inteligent and have powers to help them blend in which explains how thier existance can be hidden. The blood lusty ravaging beast in 30 days of night are too mush like animals to avoid detection.
When reading about shapeshifters or werewolves, i perfer transformation into actual wolves to the halfman creature, like in Kelly Armstrong's books. Her wolves insticnts and behaviors are more like actual wolves. Being a werewolf doenst make you lust to kill people any more than an actual wolf would, but unstable people make unstable werewolves. I like that to Laurell Hamitons wolves who see humans and food.

Well I have read Twilight and yes I am a guy , liked it. I thought the writing was pretty good, and don't think I liked it beacuse I am 15, I actually prefer much more mature books, because I am very mature in the mind. And the thing about shimmering I thouhgt it was cool and with it, it helped develope the storyline, with Bella thinking Edward was even more beautiful and other things of the such.

Werner, if you are trying to cope with vamps with powers, just a little warning, sorry if this is some how a spoiler, but in the Twilight saga, there are some vampires with extra abilities. Though I liked this very much, it was a little suprise every time you meet a new vamp character you get to see if they have some cool abilty. So I think you may want to give the books a try, though the third, fourth(the most) and somewhat of the second are my favorite in the series.

Levi, that's not a spoiler; I knew that my two Goodreads friends who are budding vampire authors were influenced by Twilight, so I figured that was where they got that idea. :-) Other things being equal, I like fictional vampires best if they're closer to the traditional model; but if an author delivers a good, involving, morally-grounded story, I can take a non-traditional vampire on his/her own terms. I've got Twilight on my to-read shelf; and I hope to see the movie sometime, too.

Alright, just quick note in my oppion and some of my friends the movie is not a great portrail of the book, but really most aren't. It is a good movie though.

Well, I'll have to read the book before I can compare the two --personally, I always enjoy comparing movie adaptations to the books to see how the transition to a different art form is handled. (Though usually, as you said, moviemakers just don't do a great job of really following the books!) This group has a movies/TV thread, so whenever I see the Twilight movie, I'll try to post some reaction there. :-)

Werner wrote: "Well, I'll have to read the book before I can compare the two --personally, I always enjoy comparing movie adaptations to the books to see how the transition to a different art form is handled. (T..."

If possible I try to see the movie before I read the book. Movies can't possibly follow the book completely or they would be five or six hours long. The movie is usually a disappointment when you've read the book first and can see what they left out.

Twoina said: "If possible I try to see the movie before I read the book." Very good idea, the only problem for me though if i do that, most of the time I will lose the inspiration to read the book because I will know the main parts of the book and know what is happening.

Levi wrote: "Twoina said: "If possible I try to see the movie before I read the book." Very good idea, the only problem for me though if i do that, most of the time I will lose the inspiration to read the book..."


I guess it depends on if you want to be disappointed by the book or the movie. :)

In my case I would rather read the book
and get dissapointed.

I read the first 3 Twilight books, but the fourth, and final, was so bad that it turned me against the series as a whole. I watched most of the movie to see if it was as bad as I thought it would be. I watched about an hour before I couldn't take anymore.

There are much better YA vampire series out there than Twilight. I love The Morganville Vampires series by Rachel Caine. I also like the House of Night series by P.C. & Kristin Cast and the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. Also L.J. Smith has just had a bunch of her stuff reprinted like her Night World and The Vampire Diaries series which I really liked.