Hello Suckers!
Listen:
Halloween is just around the corner, and because it's my favorite holiday, I'm doing a few special halloween posts in honor of the day. The first is a review of my favorite vampire novels. These books are more than just my personal favorites. After all, who cares about what I like? These three books are also the most influential to the theme of vampires. Without further ado, here's the books!!!
#3, Dead Until Dark
Charlene Harris's southern vampire mysteries are not the best written books. However, in Dead Until Dark, the first in the series, we are given suspense, love, action, humor, real characters and a compelling plot. Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress who gets mixed up with civil war veteran, and vampire, William (Bill) Compton. Together they begin to unravel the mystery as to why so many of the town's women are being murdered. Shape Shifter and bar owner Sam Merlotte, another contender for Sookie's heart, helps out in the investigation by transforming into his favorite form, a dog, and sniffing around. To make matters worse, Sookie's brother Jason is accused of the crimes! Responsible for the most successful vampire media form since Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dead Until Dark inspired Six Feet Under producer Alan Ball to create the HBO program True Blood. For it's shear influence on popular culture alone, Dead Until Dark will go down in history as one of the greatest vampire novels of all time, even if the rest of the series fails to compare to the original.
#2, Interview with the Vampire
Ann Rice knows vampires. She proved that in 1976 when she published her classic work of fiction Interview With The Vampire. Interview tells the story of French vampire Louie, and details his travels throughout Louisiana and France. Along the way, he is forced to contend with his sire, the sinister yet beautiful, Lestat, the doll like, child vampire Claudia, and the boyish, devilish Armand; leader of the Theater of the Vampires. All of this he relates to the inquisitive, and passionate interviewer, as he tries to make him understand the cost of immortality. A story of love, passion, choice, and death, Interview With The Vampire took the vampire myth and made it modern. Suddenly, vampires could be gay! They could be children, boys, girls, good and unquestionably evil. A tale of the grass being greener on the other side, Interview With The Vampire changed the way we viewed the walking dead, and is the most influential vampire novel of the later half of the 20th century.
#1, Dracula
The grandfather of all vampire stories, Bram Stoker's Dracula is truly one of the greatest books ever written. Before Dracula, vampires were simply tainted abominations that feasted upon the blood of virgins. Stoker took that myth, and made a sympathetic, yet deliciously evil, vampire. Dracula was written at the end of the Victorian Era, and is one of the only books to be a masterpiece by both classic and modern standards. Had Stoker not written Dracula, Louie would have never told his story to the Interviewer, and Sookie would have never met Vampire Bill. For Dracula, despite his wickedness, made vampires feel human. A great novel on it's own merits, Dracula is a book that almost anyone can enjoy. It's large cast of characters help to round out this story of love and death. It was certainly Stoker who put the sex into horror, and for that I'm sure Ann Rice and Charlene Harris are eternally grateful.
Remember suckers, there's no such thing as an original idea. For more vampire themed stories see my other work at www.outinjersey.net.
So It Goes.
Stoker's Dracula definitely is THE classic vampire novel. In some parts, it is poorly written. To me, Van Helsing is just a "dirty old man". Yet, most of the novel has chilling parts--the boofer lady, when the institutionalized lunatic speaks as an aristocrat, for example. Two things I really like are that he is not an angst-ridden tween and Dracula is the sole vampire of the book. There is something more chilling when the monster is the sole source of evil.
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