Julie Kagawa’s The Immortal Rules might seem like your standard paranormal YA at first glance, but don’t let that fool you. Because it’s actually a fantastic book, and more than that, there’s a lot going on here that’s worth delving into. I absolutely love it when authors twist things around and upend dominant narratives, which […]
Category: vampires
Book Review: Team Human, by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan
What do you do when your best friend develops a romantic interest in someone you think is wildly inappropriate? What if that person happens to be a vampire? That’s the setup for Team Human, a cowritten romp through a world where vampires have gone public, but they still experience their fair share of discrimination, even […]
Vampires and the Legitimisation of the Rape-Romance
Rape-romance is a rather old and established genre; for those not familiar with it, it’s a subset of romance that involves things like ‘forced seduction.’ The basic storyline involves the heroine repeatedly resisting the advances of the hero, who eventually ‘forces[1. What a nice word for rape.]’ her, making her realise that she really does […]
Human Monstrosities: Vampires and Villainism
The current iteration of vampire mythology has taken on an interesting twist by humanising the vampire. Rather than creating a purely monstrous entity of evil whom the humans in the story are supposed to fear because it is inhuman, creators have done something very different with the vampire. Some aspects of the legend are retained; […]
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Lady Vamps?
Bram Stoker’s Dracula set the tone for generations of female vampires to follow. Dracula may be sinister and evil, sauve and debonair, creepy and overbearing, but it’s his brides who create a particular spectre of terror. They are the realisation of all that is feared about women, with predatory appetites and an unabashed sexuality, a […]
Economic Vampires
The vampire trend, it appears, is dead. Well and truly staked. The market for vampires in pop culture is drying up, tastemakers are turning their interests elsewhere, and the new hotness is fairies and angels. Even zombies, poor dears, are lagging in the polls. It’s a tough time to be undead. But the vampire metaphor […]
Mad Mysticism, Vampirism, and Drusilla
Drusilla is one of the most interesting characters on Buffy and Angel. She flits in and out of storylines, often playing a very critical role, and she’s also one of Whedon’s Brunettes, the characters who recur over and over again in various forms in Whedon’s work. Fragile, but dangerous. Eerie, but in need of protection […]
Challenged Books: Twilight
In 2009, The Twilight Saga achieved the dubious distinction of being number five on the list of most frequently challenged books for the year. These challenges, oddly enough, were not based on a wooden, unimaginative writing style and some seriously troubling characterisations, but rather ‘religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group,’ according to the […]
Sookie Stackhouse: Stepping Outside the Tropes
Content Note: This post discusses plot points in Dead Until Dark and it also discusses incest and molestation. I think it has been established at this point that I have a bit of thing for Sookie Stackhouse, lead character in the Sookie Stackhouse novels upon which True Blood is based. She really intrigues me, as […]
House of Night
I recently started reading the House of Night books, in part because several people talked them up to me, and in part because a charming waitperson insisted on loaning me her copies of the first two books. (Take that, New York Times and your snobbish lists of things waitstaff can and can’t do…I’m pretty sure […]