The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Oh, what a great book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is!  If you thought fun vampire books were SO OVER, think again!

I read some reviews when this book came out over the summer that said how great it was, but I was like, "Vampires? Nothankyou."  But, this is no Twilight, and it's no Stackhouse either.  In Holly Black's YA novel, vampires have been discovered in the human world and relegated to "Coldtowns" - ghetto-ized parts of big cities where vampires and humans are kept behind walls - a self-sustaining and self-governed area that sustains itself on webcasts and black markets.  They're dangerous and perceived as glamourous - some humans want to go there and become immortals, but are more likely to end up dead.

Tana wakes up the morning after a "Sundown party" in which all of her friends have been killed and her ex-boyfriend is "cold" - he's been bitten by a vampire and will turn into a vampire himself if he drinks human blood.  Tana saves her ex-boyfriend and a mysterious vampire named Gavriel.  Gavriel's an old vampire, and he falls in love with Tana because she saves him - the first person to ever help him.  He's dangerous and gorgeous and old-fashioned, hence, he's smokin' hot and irresistible to Tana, but, thank god there's more to their relationship than mere attraction (ahem Edward and Bella!) Black also inserts a little covert Marxism into her story.  Tana reflects on "a bunch of professors talking about monsters" on tv, "The monster is bigger than human. It represents abundance - overabundance, the white-haired man had said, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. It has lots of eyes, extra arms, too many teeth. Everything about it is to many and too much."  I happened across this great article in the NY Times while reading the book: Dreamboat Vampires and Zombie Capitalists that helped me understand Black's not just shitting around here, I suspect she could talk some deep theory with the best.

But, whether you love Lacan or just a good old fashioned teen romance (with vampires!), this book doesn't disappoint. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is a terrific read that's full of excitement, surprises and steamy kissing.

Fledgling

When we were in Seattle last year, I kept seeing Octavia Bulter books everywhere - I'd never heard of her before but it was pretty clear she was the patron saint writer in Seattle.  I asked for a recommendation and a bookseller told me: Fledgling.  My To-Read pile is pretty big so I only got around to reading it a year later - well worth the wait! I definitely intend to read more by this great Seattle writer.

I don't like reading back covers of novels, so I didn't quite realize what this was about.  One time I recommended to my book club that we read Fledgling and my friend said, "Isn't that about a vampire?" with more than a little distain.  I said, "Oh, no, I don't think so..." but walked over to my book shelf and briefly peeked at the back cover, enough to see "...Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood..." Whaaaaaaaa?

Anyway, it is indeed about this young woman, Shori, who, it turns out, is a vampire.  At the beginning of the book, she has amnesia and doesn't realize what she is - she has to teach herself or try to learn from others her unique culture.  Shori quickly starts a relationship with this handsome guy, Wright, whose blood she also drinks.  She has very dark skin and comes from a line of scientific vampires.

Some of us have tried for centuries to find ways to be less vulnerable during the day. Shori is our latest and most successful effort in that direction. She's also, through genetic engineering, part human. We were experimenting with genetic engineering well before humanity learned to d o it - before they even learned that it was possible.

What's pretty weird is that this book has actually quite a lot in common with Twilight.  Both were published in 2005, and both have super-smart, attractive vampires that live for a long time and have irresistible, insatiable relationships with plain-old humans. Most of the vampires a "good" - they don't kill their blood sources but rather have a symbiotic relationship. Both take place in the Pacific Northwest, and, get this... both have a lot of SITTING ON LAPS!  Is that a thing?

However, where Meyer's Twilight is insipid (if not deliciously addictive) nonsense, Fledgling is a vehicle for larger themes surrounding race and femininity, sexuality and Feminism.  For example, Shori (unlike Bella) is immensely powerful - she's brilliant, she's strong, and she's sexually assertive.  Because the vampires need a lot of blood, they need multiple human partners, usually both men and women.  All the vampires have to maintain the peace in their families.  Navigating the inevitable jealousies of a poly-amorous household is seen as an admirable feat of sensitivity and intellect, one at which Shori excels.  Her black skin, small size, relative youth and gender put her at a disadvantage to the other vampires, who fear and criticize almost all those attributes - it's up to her to convince the community to help protect her and her human consorts, as well as to reteach her the things she needs to know to survive.

On 50 Shades of Gray and Fan Fiction

I've been quite amused by the popularity of 50 Shades of Gray and the conversations around it recently.   Erotic fiction is certainly not new, but the level of discourse around it has changed recently, in that people are so willing to admit they're reading British author EL James Fifty Shades trilogy.  Not surprisingly, it's a top-selling ebook, for those who don't like to bare their book covers.

I haven't actually read the book, except for some excerpts I read online - but, I never let a little thing like actual experience get in the way of sharing my thoughts.  What's surprising is how few people seem to know that Fifty Shades is fanfiction of the Twilight series, and, not only that, but I've discovered quite a few friends don't know what fanfic is, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain.  Fanfic is a type of story written in the style or with a continuation of characters or stories from a piece of literature.  It varies wildly in quality - some is quite excellent, like Wide Sargasso Sea or March, and some is really awful, like 90% of the stuff you'll find on fanfiction.net.  Harry Potter and Twilight are the most popular kinds of fan fiction; it's not all erotic, there are many represented genres.  (BTW, if you're just reading about this for the first time, and you're anything like me, you'll spend the next straight 24 hours mindlessly reading one story after another until you never want to ready anything ever again.)

You can sort stories on fanfiction.net by type of story, "rating", language, number of words, characters, complete or in-progress and inspiration via movie or book.  So, a short, finished, mature, sexy story about Bella and Esme would have a search the one below...

and three results would appear, one with this description: "Bella, still a virgin at 20 & perpetually horny and snarky, has a heart too big to worry about herself. Turns out being forced to work on Valentine's Day because she's single may not be such a bad thing. Especially when her client is Esme Platt."  


A few years ago, a similar search for Bella and Edward resulted in a series called "Master of the Universe" by SnowQueen IceDragon, which is now Fifty Shades of Grey.  They've since removed "Master" from fanfiction.net, but I did find an excerpt.  EL James's publishers claim that "Master" and Fifty Shades are separate works of fiction, but some enterprising sleuths discovered the books are 89% identical.  So, apparently the guy character, based on Edward, is rich and possessive and secretive (although not a vampire), and the girl is a horny clumsy virgin (sound familiar?).  I hear there's also a Jacob character, and possibly an Alice?  Anywho, as far as I know, Stephanie Meyer hasn't made any accusations of infringement, and even if she did, who knows what would happen?    I'm no copyright expert, but I wonder what the legal implications are or will be, assuming more and more publishers go trolling the fanfic databases for the next best-seller.  By the way, it's not unusual to see authors write "I do not own these characters" at the beginning of their stories, as if absolving themselves of any dubious copyright infraction they may have committed.  


The copyright thing is strange ... what if I just wrote an erotic novel about a daring orphaned boy and his brave red-headed girlfriend, who happened to be the sister of his best friend?  (Wait, what IF I DID???)  I mean, can we just do that?  

Check these out:
3 Grannies critique
Gilbert Gorrfreid reads
50 Shades of Grey Pinterest board
Increase in rope sales?
Ellen reads

Breaking Dawn

Despite claims that I would never read another Stephanie Meyer book again, I couldn't resist reading Breaking Dawn. A couple of good friends informed me that it was the worse one yet (and therefore the best). I wasn't going to read it unless it met two criteria: 1. That she finally gets turned into a vampire and 2. They have sex.

(Spoiler Alert) Both those things happen, but not in that order. If you're not familiar with the Twilight series, I'll tell you. It's about a girl who falls in love with a vampire, and, for really no reason, he also falls in love with her. For various reasons, they struggle, and other vampires try to kill them. They persevere. The first book is ridiculous but readable, the second book is beyond ridiculous and really boring, I didn't read the 3rd book, and the forth book is, once again, beyond ridiculous and almost unreadable.

It's a well known fact that readers of these books are either teenage girls or pervy 30-somethings like myself. Two demographics that appreciate a good sex scene - but, I was a bit disappointed. And, slightly creeped out. Instead of the filthy details, what Meyer delivers is something like this:

Edward kissed her and they fell onto the bed... [NEXT CHAPTER]
"Oh, good morning. What happened to the headboard?"
"I broke it."
"Really? I didn't notice."
"You were preoccupied."
"Yes I was. With the sex. That we had. Huh. I'm covered in bruises."
"What? No! I nearly killed you with my vampiric strength! I shall never forgive myself!"
"Don't worry. I liked it."

What's such a shame about these books is that they're so old fashioned. I wish that the (supposedly) most popular book young women were reading wasn't about some dopey teenager who requires saving all the time by her strong, wise boyfriend. And (here comes another big time spoiler) what happens but she gets preggo practically the first time they have sex?!? Her vampire husband (who wanted to wait until they got married to consummate the ol' union) tries to convince her to have a vampire-baby abortion, but, papa, she's keeping the baby (even if it is a blood-sucking monster that will be the death of everyone they know. Was Sarah Palin involved in this?)

I really don't know what's worse, though - the post-feminist story or the pre-brain writing. Meyer writes with all the grace of a sledgehammer. What (I believe) is meant to pass for witty dialogue sounds like two idiots yakking. She's less subtle than even Dan Brown. At one point, I am not making this up, she wrote, "A tear the size of a baseball rolled into the russet fur beneath his eye." There's 754 pages of this nonsense!

Naturally, I did not read it all. After about 50 pages, I started skipping about 10 pages per turn of the page, and then passed on the last 100. It's good for a laugh, but might just be the downfall of our entire society.

Twilight

Twilight (2005) is a YA book by Stephanie Meyer, about a young girl (16?) who moves to Fork, Washington, and before long meets a family of vampires at her high school. I don't think I'm ruining it by telling you that she falls in love with one of them. I found Twilight ridiculously addictive, and I read the approx. 500 pages in a matter of days and am fairly thrilled that there are 3 more for me to read.

Like the vampire tales that came before, Meyer borrows some vampire rules (blood drinking), explains away others, and invents her own (turns out they can go in the sun!). It's difficult not to compare this book to the Buffy the Vampire series, in which a human girl also falls in love with a vampire. A better metaphor for dating the ultimate bad-boy, I can't imagine. The beloved vampires in both Twilight and Buffy (Edward & Angel) are "good" vampires, meaning they don't kill humans for food, which doesn't mean that they don't LONG for blood. As a result, the table is turned on the classic teenage conflict to control their "urges" - rather than trying hard not to have sex, the vampire has to try really hard not to suck the blood of his human girlfriend. It leads to some highly confused snuggling.


I'm simultaneously reading this book called The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (don't laugh, it's really amazing!) by Carol J Adams (1999). Adams makes a compelling case that the patriarchy and meat eating are closely tied, and that women and animals that are eaten are both objectified and denied their humanity (or acknowledgment as sentient beings) and that's why our society is so violent (especially toward women). She calls this the "absent referent", because the being (woman or animal) is objectified to the point beyond which they're acknowledged as beings (ie., we refer to "meat", not say, "a cow", or even "a piece of ass" instead of "a woman".) Much more on this later after I finish it - anywho, Twilight is practically chapter two of Adams book, where the woman is someone who is treated "like a piece of meat" and the vampire (insert teenage bad-boy) literally wants to eat her. Huh.

One frustrating thing about Twilight is that, as it reads as a very old fashioned romance novel (think du Maurier or Brontë), the characters also fit into these very old-fashioned gender roles. I found this mildly disturbing for a contemporary YA book obviously targeted toward young women, and I hope that as the story progresses, the lead character breaks out of her victimized state and becomes more powerful. I think it's a lot more fun to see the classic tales subverted, and instead of waiting for her knight to come and save her, the young woman takes care of business herself.