A different take on vampires
Having finished Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” saga, I tried out another vampire series.
I wasn’t impressed.
“Dead Until Dark” is the first of Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series. The HBO series “True Blood,” which I have not seen, is based on it.
In Sookie’s world, people know vampires exist and, in a way, accept them in society. The vamps order blood substitutes at bars, own their own nightclubs and, in the case of those wanting to mainstream, own their own houses.
Unlike Meyer’s vampires, Harris’ follow more of the traditional mythology, such as being unable to be exposed to sunlight.
Of course, a romance buds between Sookie and a vampire; his name is Bill.
As women begin popping up murdered throughout town, people assume the crimes were vampires’ doing. Skeptical, Sookie investigates and ends up putting her life on the line.
I waited to read this book on vacation, hoping for a fun, lighthearted read. It was lighthearted, but the story didn’t grab me in the way I had hoped.
I didn’t particularly care about the romance, and the mystery wasn’t especially thrilling. After reading the Twilight series, I found it unoriginal for Harris to stay within vampire mythology (though I thought her line about vampires coming out of the coffin was clever).
As one review I later read said, Harris devoted too much space to Sookie shaving her legs and describing characters’ clothing.
But, who am I to know? When I looked up the series on the Beloit Public Library catalog all of the books had a waiting list.
I’ve started a small press, By Light Unseen Media, devoted entirely to vampire fiction and non-fiction of all different types. You and your readers might like to check it out! I call my own “Vampires of New England” series, “vampire stories for grown-ups.”
Fictional vampire “rules” change constantly and you’d be surprised how recently some of them were invented. Almost nothing that people associate with “vampires” has anything to do with real “vampire myth,” that is, folklore beliefs. That’s especially true for the idea that vampires are harmed or inhibited in any way by sunlight, which is a 20th century movie invention. Writers are free to choose any “rules” they want as long as they apply those rules consistently. Readers have different preferences, one reader’s sancrosanct rule is another’s stale cliche. But anyone who thinks vampires are “supposed to be” done in a certain way or that the Twilight Saga “changed vampires” in some way has a very narrow view of the field.