Archive for the 'Vampires' category

Review: Bunnicula, by Deborah and James Howe

Oct 25 2010 Published by under Children's Books, Reviews, Vampires

Bunnicula (98 pages, NY: Simon & Schuster) was published in 1979. Since then, several more Bunnicula books have been published, and there are over 8 million in print. My eight year old son, Max, the better one (<—– Max added that), read it, and he asked me to read it too. I did, on a flight to San Diego. I laughed so hard that the flight attendant asked me if anything was the matter. It wasn’t. I was just enjoying an incredibly funny, heartwarming, and wise children’s story. Now that we’ve both read it, I’m going to ask Max a few questions:

Jessica: Ok, what is this book about?

Max: Vampire bunnies.

Jessica: Can you say more?

Max: No.

Jessica: MAX!!

Max: What?

Jessica: You have to tell people about a book if you are going to review it.

Max: Oh.

Jessica: So, tell me more about this book. What happens? Who is in it? That kind of stuff.

Max: One question at a time.

Jessica: *sighs* Okay, then. What happens in this book?

Max: A family finds a rabbit at a movie theater. They decide to bring it home and keep it. But the pets –Harold and Chester –think it is a vampire, and they want to get rid of it. Harold is a dog and Chester is a cat.

Jessica: What could possibly make them think that a cute little bunny rabbit is in fact a vampire?

Max: Fangs, sleeping at day, waking up at night, drinking juice out of vegetables…

Jessica: Drinking juice out of vegetables?

Max: Yes. The vegetable is white with two teeth marks in it.

Jessica: Can you tell us more about the other main characters, Harold and Chester?

Max: Chester the cat is really smart. He thinks of things immediately, He doesn’t give it a few minutes. Harold the dog is not that smart, but he still is a good pet. I mean, he doesn’t even know what a parrot is.

Jessica: What was your favorite part?

Max: When they try to put a sirloin steak through Bunnicula’s heart. Because Chester is reading a book about how to kill a vampire, and he confused “steak” and “stake.”

Jessica: What is Chester worried about? I mean, it’s just vegetables.

Max: But he says “Today vegetables … tomorrow the world.” He thinks Bunnicula will eat the whole family.

Jessica: Is this a scary book?

Max: Depends. It depends on what you think about the book. Do you think it is scary? Funny? Just a regular book?

Jessica: Well, what did you think?

Max: It was a good book. Three and a half stars out of five.

Jessica: Give me an example of a five star book.

Max: The Hoboken Chicken Emergency (we’ll review this one another time).

Jessica: Who do you think will like Bunnicula?

Max: I think anybody who likes to read will like this book.

******SPOILER ALERT*******

Jessica: Is Bunnicula really a vampire, in your opinion?

Max: Yes, because he still wakes up at night, has fangs, can get out of his cage without bending anything or opening any doors, and doesn’t like garlic.

******END SPOILER*******

Jessica: Thanks Max. Was this fun?

Max: Ayuh.


EXCERPT:

The little bunny had begun to move for the first time since he had been put in his cage. He lifted his tiny nose and inhaled deeply, as if gathering sustenance from the moonlight.

“He slicked his ears back close to his body, and for the first time,” Chester said, “I noticed the peculiar marking on his forehead. What had seemed an ordinary black spot between his ears took on a strange v-shape, which connected with the big black patch that covered his back and each side of his neck. It looked as if he was wearing a coat . . . no, more like a cape than a coat.”

Through the silence had drifted the strains of a remote and exotic music.

“I could have sworn it was a gypsy violin,” Chester told me. “I thought perhaps a caravan was passing by, so I ran to the window.”

I remembered my mother telling me something about caravans when I was a puppy. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what.

“What’s a caravan?” I asked, feeling a little stupid.

“A caravan is a band of gypsies traveling through the forest in their wagons,” Chester answered.

“Ah, yes.” It was coming back to me now. “Station wagons?”

“No, covered wagons! The gypsies travel all through the land, setting up camps around great bonfires, doing magical tricks, and sometimes, if you cross their palms with a piece of silver, they’ll tell your fortune.”

“You mean if I gave them a fork, they’d tell my fortune?” I asked, breathlessly.

Chester looked at me with disdain. “Save your silverware,” he said, “it wasn’t a caravan after all.”

I was disappointed. “What was it?” I asked.

Chester explained that when he looked out the window, he saw Professor Mickelwhite, our next door neighbor, playing the violin in hisliving room. He listened for a few moments to the haunting melody and sighed with relief. I’ve really got to stop reading these horror stories late at night, he thought, it’s beginning to affect my mind. He yawned and turned to go back to his chair and get some sleep. As he turned, however, he was startled by what he saw.

There in the moonlight, as the music filtered through the air, sat the bunny, his eyes intense and staring, an unearthly aura about them.

“Now, this is the part you won’t believe,” Chester said to me, “but as I watched, his lips parted in a hideous smile, and where a rabbit’s buck teeth should have been, two little pointed fangs glistened.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of Chester’s story, but the way he told it, it set my hair on end.

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What do Vampires Have to Do With Bioethics?

Oct 23 2010 Published by under Academia, Sookie Stackhouse, Vampires

A terrifyingly true account of giving the vampire paper to a room full of bioethicists…

No, no, I did not talk about the possibility that health care providers might be creatures of the night. In my paper, The Undead in Bioethics and Vampire Fiction, I claimed that cultural and literary criticisms of vampire fiction could benefit from the addition of some bioethicists to the discussion, and that narrative bioethics could benefit from looking a little more closely at commercial/mass market/genre fiction, especially vampire fiction.

This is an annual conference put on by the largest bioethics organization in the US. There are 420 sessions over 5 days, and with most of those having 3 speakers, so you can imagine what a big conference this is. Bioethics is many things: academic, clinical, political, public. And this conference brings together people who work in traditional academic settings, academic medical centers, medical centers of the nonacademic stripe, public policy and think tank folks, artists, advocates, community organizers, students, practitioners, etc etc etc.

My paper was one of six in the sub-area Arts, Literature and Cultural Studies, but unlike another multidisciplinary conference I attended this year, the Popular Culture Association, ASBH doesn’t organize the panels or conference with the sub-areas in mind at all. There are affinity group  meetings each evening, which you can attend to see others in your area. Tonight, I plan to attend the clinical ethics affinity group meeting, because we have a very controversial issue before us: the credentialing and licensure of ethics consultants.

So my fellow speakers were a philosopher who talked about existential suffering at the end of life, and a JD/PhD who discussed consent to cadaveric donation (like, when you give your body to science, do you mind if the US government straps an explosive device to it, and blows it to smithereens? Or if some of your tissues might be used to plump someone’s lips … or penis?). Our session took place in the ballroom, where the plenary sessions have been, which seats about 500 and has two giant screens for your power points, as well as a large raised stage. Of course, the room wasn’t full as there were many other sessions taking place, but I would guess we had about 150 people, which would not have been possible in the smaller conference rooms. So I guess the organizers knew what they were doing.

My paper made a point similar to the one I gave at PCA in April. Lots of bioethicists appreciate the fertile ground which fiction presents for our work, whether it’s used as a teaching tool, a clinical tool, or a site of investigation of important bioethical themes. But they tend to focus exclusively on literary fiction. When they do look at popular fiction — and here I cited recent essays which addressed the work of Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, and Robin Cook — the analysis tends to focus heavily on the possible negative (distorting, simplifying, upsetting) impact of this fiction on readers and on public discourse about bioethics generally. So the first half of my paper involved making some claims about readers of popular fiction, how actively we read, and how we don’t necessarily need the protection of others to save us from bad messages. I also talked a little bit about the ways genre fiction can be read — in terms of system, in addition to as an individual text — to note that if a bioethicist picks up one book by Stephen King and thinks she is getting all of the things out of it that a seasoned horror reader would, she is mistaken. For example, characters that look thin when reading one book in a series (Sookie Stackhouse, for example) flesh out once you appreciate the serialized nature of their narrative. And other points along these lines. So, basically, I argued that (a) popular fiction can fail to  fulfill its aims, while literary fiction can fail to fulfill its aims, and (b) there’s no way to make an invidious distinction between good and bad fiction based on how popular it is, unless you have a secret anterior dislike to genre, which you’ll have to substantiate.

I know this argument won’t please some readers of this blog. Perhaps I should have just claimed there is no difference AT ALL between popular fiction and literary fiction, neither in terms of quality, nor in any other terms. But my goal is to convince people that they need to turn theoretical attention to genre fiction. If I can do that while making a less controversial, more easily defensible claim, I will.

In the second half of the paper, I talked about vampire fiction, how ubiquitous it is (I made reference to it as a “category killer” and to the joke about a “vampire industrial average” in publishing). I showed lots of fun slides — never have I had so many non-textual slides in my life. I talked about literary and cultural criticism of vampire fiction, and noted that it tends not to spend much time looking at the obvious: that vampires are undead and that death figures prominently in any vampire story. Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that being undead — not blood sucking or day sleeping or even being alluring — is the one thread that ties together every vampire narrative I know. Maybe we need to get out of the deep end of the psychology pool and just think about the more obvious issues: this is the one place in our culture where people are reading and talking and thinking about death. About what it takes to be dead. About how we figure out who is dead.  About whether there are nearly dead states that are enough like true death to count. About organ and tissue donation. Etc.  Don’t bioethicsts have anything to contribute to this discussion?

Putting my feminist hat on, I talked briefly about the tendency to think that if a vampire narrative is about romance it is therefore not about anything else, and that everything in it is a metaphor for sex. I used the image of Bella’s dream about being an old lover to an eternally 17 year old Edward to suggest that questions about what happily ever after means in the context of immortal love might be one way that women think about death.

There are many other bioethical issues I could raise in this connection –  longevity research being the one that comes to mind first — but you get the point.

I had 20 minutes total for reading the paper and for discussion. I made sure to position myself openly as a reader and fan of the vampire fiction I was discussing, and had to roll my eyes inwardly as one of my copanelists snickered through the whole thing. The response from the audience was really terrific, and also from the editors of  two  journals in this subfield of bioethics, who approached me afterwards. I was especially gratified that one of them told me he agrees completely that we need to be working on popular fiction across the genres. A medical anthropologist asked me be an outside reader for one of her PhD students who is writing on vampire folklore and medicine, and a med school professor told me he now plans to begin his unit on death by discussing vampires. I couldn’t be more pleased with that response.

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Review: True Blood and Philosophy

Jul 31 2010 Published by under NEAR Reviews, Reviews, Sookie Stackhouse, Vampires

There are now two series dedicated to philosophy and popular culture. The original, Popular Culture and Philosophy series (Open Court) began with Seinfeld and Philosophy in 2000 and is now on volume #52, Manga and Philosophy.  One of my very first publications was a review of Seinfeld and Philosophy, and I contributed to the 4th volume in that series, Buffy and Philosophy.

The newer series, Philosophy and Popular Culture (Blackwell) launched in 2007 with 24 and Philosophy. True Blood and Philosophy, which I received gratis as an examination copy, is the 20th volume in the series.

Within the philosophical community, there is some debate about the value of these books. And by “debate”, I mean that some critics see these books in the same way an evangelical Christian sees a darkened sky and oceans turning to blood. For two examples, check out this post, or this one.

My own feeling is that the discipline is in pretty bad shape if two lightweight and fun book series can destroy its credibility. The trick with these books, especially for the cynical professional philosopher, is to go in with the right expectations. As Blackwell puts it:

Our goal with the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series is to get philosophy out of the ivory tower by publishing books about smart popular culture for serious fans. With each volume in this series we seek to teach philosophy using the themes, characters, and ideas from your favorite TV shows, comic books, movies, music, games, and more.

Few if any of the essays in these books constitute philosophical research. The best of them of make contributions to the academic study of popular culture. But many don’t even do that: they are content to connect up a Philosophy 101 concept or problem (free will, personhood, the social contract, the problem of identity, etc.) with an aspect of popular culture in order to help readers (fans and students) understand philosophy in light of a pop culture phenomenon with which they are familiar.

If you read these volumes with the same expectations you would have for an issue of peer reviewed academic journal, you aren’t being fair.  I suppose some critics object to using examples from popular culture to teach philosophy (and by “teach”, I mean both in formal settings like classrooms, and the kind of self-teaching average fans might do when they pick up such books at Borders). That may be because they think popular culture is harmful (we should all be reading Proust instead), or because they don’t think using popular culture to teach philosophy works.

I have no comment on the former, but for the latter I will need to see some argument. What I know, after being in the front of a philosophy classroom for 12 years, is that starting from a place where students feel knowledgeable and comfortable can work very well to introduce them to a subject they have likely never directly encountered, a subject which in the absence of direct knowledge, signifies for many students obsolescence and irrelevance … if it signifies anything at all.

So what I look for first in such books is accurate philosophy. It is not easy to teach philosophy in the bite sizes necessitated by these short essays, and brevity can distort. Connecting philosophy up to popular culture also requires knowledge of and sensitivity towards the material. In reading this series, if I get something really insightful about the pop culture object of reflection  — something that could be developed and published in a peer reviewed popular culture studies journal –  I am delighted. And if I learn something about philosophy, or am made to see philosophical connections where I hadn’t, I consider it an unexpected bonus. A final requirement is restraint in the use of puns.

On most these counts, True Blood and Philosophy succeeds. It is divided into five sections, with three essays each: one on ethics, one on politics, one on sexuality and gender, one on the supernatural and divine, and one on metaphysics. The list price, $17.95 for a softcover, may be prohibitive for some readers, but Amazon has it new for $12.21 and there’s a Kindle edition for $9.99. As is typical for such collections, the contributors range in their connection to the discipline of philosophy, from tenured associate professors in the field to an undergraduate student (the latter being the daughter of one of the editors). There are also contributions from academics trained in art history, public policy, English, and political science. A few contributors hail from non-academic life: editors, contractors, and human resources specialists.

An initial concern I had about this volume was that at most two seasons of the TV show True Blood would have been aired before it went to press. Knowing that the book series on which it is based, Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, is now in its 10th installment, and that the show, which has great ratings, will likely continue into several more seasons, I questioned the rush to get this out. My concern was alleviated to some extent by two factors (1) most of the contributors seem to have read the books, and often make reference to them in the essays (so, a big spoiler warning for fans), and (2) the essays deal more with world itself, not on detailed character examinations or plot. Since most of the world building is complete in the first two books/seasons, it mostly works.

The volume focuses very heavily on vampires. Those looking for more on the shapeshifters, weres or fairies that populate Charlaine Harris’s world will be disappointed. Perhaps a casualty of taking their cue more from the show than the series, there is also less focus on Sookie than I would have liked. The books are written in the first person, and Sookie is a very complex and interesting character. Most of Sookie is lost in Alan Ball’s vision, which is extremely androcentric.  One essay,”I am Sookie. Hear Me Roar: Sookie Stackhouse and Feminist Ambivalence”, by Lillian E. Craton and Kathryn E. Jonell, reflects on the difficulties of feminist alliance (many of Sookie’s enemies are women), complicated by the different social locations women inhabit, some of which may place them (Tara) at a disadvantage relative to their white middle class sisters (i.e. Sookie), the double edged sword of female sexuality — both empowering and dangerous for women (Maryann, whom the authors see as the ultimate victim of female sexuality), and Sookie’s struggles to maintain her independence and autonomy while dating and working for men who have the potential to overpower her. On this last:

Sookie’s conflicted emotions about workplace relationships and her ongoing attraction to vampires complicate the potential of True Blood and the Southern Vampire Mysteries as feminist social commentary. Sookie’s biggest challenge doesn’t seem to be fighting oppression, but sorting out her own desires.

This essay raises several important issues, any one of which could constitute the subject of an independent investigation, and it is too bad the editors didn’t make room that that approach. It’s also compromised, in my view, by trying to cover both the television show and the books, which differ markedly in their treatment of these issues. Alan Ball’s version of  the character of Tara, for example, as a constantly victimized, ineffectually perpetually angry, shortsighted (to the point of stupidity) black woman is nearly unrecognizable to readers of the novels, who know Tara as a white woman with a level head who overcame a horrendous childhood (and, yes, who makes mistakes). The same goes for Maryann. And while the Sookie of the TV show is just a plucky gal with telepathic abilities, in the novels, Sookie is an incredibly astute, complex character, who recognizes that she is disadvantaged by her gender, her “disability”, and her economic status.

Some of the essays are very straightforward explications of basic philosophical concepts. For example, the first essay, “To Turn or Not To Turn”, by Christopher Robichaud, explicates the concept of informed consent using the example of Bill turning Jessica into a vampire (“vampires need explicit, informed, noncoercive consent before they’re permitted to turn the living into the undead”), while “Pets, Cattle and Higher Life forms on True Blood”, by Ariadne Blayde and George A. Dunn, is effective at exploring moral ranking among kinds of being (“The assumption that human beings occupy the highest rung on the great ladder of being ins challenged in True Blood by the existence of a species that seems to be superior to us in every way, possibly even in their kinship with the divine.”). “Signed in Blood: Rights and the Vampire-Human Social Contract”,  by Joseph J. Foy and “Honey, If We Can’t Kill People, What’s the Point Of Being a Vampire: Can Vampires Be Good Citizens?” by William M. Curtis, both consider what it would take for vampires to have rights and function as full citizens. Are vampires just another unique subculture claiming its rights, which our liberal democracy should accommodate, and what would that require (would a “life sentence” for a criminal vampire be cruel and unusual punishment?). The question of “what is natural” and how we define it, so important to debates over sexuality and new reproductive technologies, is addressed by Andrew Terjesen and Jenny Terjesen in “Are Vampires Unnatural”. Patricia Brace and Robert Arp explore connections between the social and moral status of vampires and and gays in “Coming Out of the Coffin and Coming out of the Closet”. Finally, criteria of personal identity are explored by Sarah Grubb’s “Vampires, Werewolves, and Shapeshifters: The more they change, the more they stay the same”.

A standout, especially for readers who know something about vampire mythology, is Bruce A. McClelland’s “Un-True Blood: The Politics of Artificiality.” McClelland, who has published a book on vampires and their slayers, situates True Blood within the evolving vampire lore. He wonders whether

the attempt to bring vampires into the human world  by encouraging them to consume TruBlood represents a drive to ensnare them in our same dependencies and lack of freedom that characterize our society, one that many would characterize as lacking belief, trust, or a deep link to nature.

Another very interesting essay is Fred Curry’s “Keeping Secrets from Sookie”, which explores the epistemological questions raised by Sookie’s telepathy, such as “whether anyone could possess any kind of knowledge that even the most powerful telepath couldn’t learn using her powers?”.

There is quite a bit of overlap in the essays, especially on the moral status of vampires, and their connections to other marginalized subgroups. This overlap was made even more manifest by the choice of the same quotations (Eric and Sookie’s discussion about whether humans are to antelopes and as vampires are to lions, for example) and sources (No fewer than three essays discuss Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?”). Many of the essays rely on a pseudo documentary about vampires, from the first season’s DVD. something many readers will not have seen. And some of the essays, in trying to keep a light tone, go a bit too far, for example Brace and Arp’s final exhortation that:

coming out of the coffin or the closet these days requires courage. Let’s hope, pray, and act so that in the future anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, religions or race, whether living or dead, can find acceptance along with basic human and civil rights in Bon Temps and your hometown, too.

I wish the editors had waited a couple of years to publish this volume. Perhaps a few more seasons of True Blood would have drawn more essays on other aspects of the narrative, such as Sookie’s problematic conception of her telepathy as disability, fascinating communities like the werepanthers of Hotshot or the weres of Shreveport, the complex relationship of Southern identities to various forms of Christianity, to name just a few.

Overall, though, this is a fun book for fans of the show with no philosophical background, and a good resource for teaching our vampire-loving students some basic concepts in philosophy. The brevity of each essay left me with more questions than answers, but that’s what good philosophy teaching does.

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Review: Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

Jul 29 2010 Published by under Reviews, Vampires

Sunshine, a fantasy by Robin McKinley published in 2003 and reissued in 2008, won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature (McKinley’s acceptance remarks here). I regret very much reading the screed against readers which the author posted on her blog. I’m sure we all feel that way at times about the people we deal with, but I think it says something when you let those kinds of comments stand as a public statement of your relationship with your audience. As a reader who just discovered McKinley and went to her website to find out more about her and her books, I felt insulted, slightly pissed, and deflated. I am not sure that’s what I would be going for with my author website.

But I will leave off that distressing discovery, surprising and interesting as it is, and talk about Sunshine, which was also surprising and interesting, but in a good way. I listened to Sunshine, which is written in the first person. First person often works quite well on audio, and the performer did a great job with it. Sample here.

I finished this book last week, but have had a hard time starting the review. And then I read this blurb by Neil Gaiman and figured out why:

A gripping, funny, page-turning pretty much perfect work of magical literature that exists more or less at the unlikely crossroads of Chocolat, Interview With a Vampire, Misery and the tale of Beauty and the Beast. It’s not quite SF, and it’s not really horror, and only kind of a love story, and it’s all three while still being solidly Fantastique.

Sunshine is the story of Rae — nicknamed Sunshine — a twenty something baker, content with her life working in her step-father’s cafe, where her boyfriend Mel is one of the cooks. She has the usual family issues, including a very strained relationship with her mother, and when she decides to head out one day to the lake to get away, Rae ends up being captured by vampires and brought to an abandoned mansion. The Others are known to exist in Rae’s world, where wars have decimated cities, and they include witches and demons, but vampires are the most feared and hated.

When Rae discovers she has been captured to provide a yummy temptation for Constantine, a vampire who is also a prisoner, she is sure this is the end. But Rae relearns some sorcery her grandmother had taught her as a child, and she and Con are able to escape. She learns that her father, whom her mother left and who has never been in her life, is (or was? We never know for sure.) a powerful sorcerer. Rae and Con now have a kind of bond, which develops as they realize they have to battle the vampire who held them captive if they ever hope to return to some semblance of a normal life.

In the meantime, The SOF — Special Other forces, a kind of CIA dedicated to the eradication and/or neutralization of Others — are interested in the events at the lake mansion, and in Rae’s mystical powers. Sensing an alliance with SOF is not in her — and certainly not in Con’s — interest, Rae has to finesse her relationship with them, while also keeping her family in the dark. She is confused about her growing relationship with Con, a creature she is supposed to revile, but who grows on her in unexpected ways.

Well, not entirely unexpected. The author mentioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an inspiration, and when a book has a female protagonist who has unexpected powers to fight the bad vamps alongside the one good vamp, who may or may not become her boyfriend, all the while keeping her concerned mother and regular human friends in the dark and keeping her normal human life afloat … well…

And yet, it feels worlds away from Buffy. For one thing, this is not a funny book (with all due respect to Gaiman). And Rae is not very likable.  She’s extremely egocentric, not just in that she’s most concerned for her own welfare, but in that she really doesn’t even think about much that doesn’t directly relate to herself. She isn’t funny or sharp or that insightful. So when you are in this book, you have to be willing to be deep inside the head of a very ordinary person. A person who is probably much more like you, the reader, than most protagonists.

For another, very little happens in this book. There’s the gangbusters kidnapping and escape in the opening chapters, which for my money was the best part of the book. But the next big action is the climax. There are several hundred pages in between of just sort of being with Rae in her world, as she copes with the events out on the lake, tries and fails to go back entirely to her old life, and eventually becomes a new, better and stronger person. But she knows herself, and I really liked that about her:

One of the things you need to understand is that I’m not a brave person. I don’t put up with being messed around, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I’m a bitch. Trust me, I can produce character references. But that’s something else. I’m not brave. Mel is brave. His oldest friend told me some stories about him once I could barely stand to listen to, about dispatch riding during the Wars, and Mel’d been pissed off when he found out, although he hadn’t denied they happened. Mom is brave: she left my dad with no money, no job, no prospects—her own parents had dumped her when she married my dad, and her younger sisters didn’t find her again till she resurfaced years later at Charlie’s—and a six-year-old daughter. Charlie is brave: he started a coffeehouse by talking his bank into giving him a loan on his house back in the days when you only saw rats, cockroaches, derelicts, and Charlie himself on the streets of Old Town.

I’m not brave. I make cinnamon rolls. I read a lot. My idea of excitement is Mel popping a wheelie driving away from a stoplight with me on pillion.

Another really great thing about this book is the way the Others and magic are described. The vampires are really really awful — including Con. They look terrifying, smell bad, move in ghastly ways. In this, McKinley keeps much closer to older vampire mythology than the latest heartthrob vamps. But I especially loved the way in which Rae’s growing sense of her own magical powers is described. For once, the magic felt to me, not like a Hollywood special effect, but truly magical:

I watched the wiggling bark. It occurred to me that this was new. I’d been seeing into shadows, but merely what was there, as if there was a rather erratic light on it. This was something else. Which gave me something I could bear to think about, so I thought about it. A few more minutes passed and it seemed to me it was as if I was watching the tree breathing. I found a leaf in shadow, and looked at it for a while; it twinkled, as if with tiny starbursts, but rather than thinking ugh—weird, I kept watching, till there seemed to be a pattern. I thought, it’s as if I’m watching its pores opening and closing. I looked down at my hands. The shadows between the fingers gleamed like a banked fire. The tiny shadows laid by the veins on the backs of them were a tiny, flickering dark green edged with a tinier, even more flickering red. The daylight part of the veins looked as it always did. In the shadow places I could see the blood moving.

I was sitting in sunlight, not shade. I automatically chose sun if there was any sun to be had. I remembered the sun on my back the first morning at the lake, like the arm of a friend. I closed my eyes.

Sunshine feels very much like the first book in a series. So little happens in its pages, compared to similar books in the subgenre, that it’s a shock when it ends as abruptly as it does. As a reader, I have had almost no contact with anyone besides Rae. I wanted to know more about her boyfriend Mel, her stepfather, her mother — who is virtually nonexistent — her powerful father and his family — also nonexistent.

I am on the fence about this. Part of me feels like the book is half baked, that some of these things really should have been explored to make the story complete. We don’t even get to know much about Constantine, and nothing about whether his odd alliance with Rae will become an intimate friendship, a romance, or something else. The other part of me just enjoyed the wonderful writing and marveled at how fresh this author could make an oft-told story feel.

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What *IS* a soul anyway? Review of Dead Sexy by Kimberly Raye

May 20 2010 Published by under Reviews, Vampires

My Harlequin Blaze Audible subscription is the gift that keeps on giving, and this week it was Kimberly Raye’s 2007 vamp romance, Dead Sexy, which is the first in her Love at First Bite series. Set in rural Texas, Dead Sexy is the story of a 100+ year old motorcycle riding vamp named Jake McCann who comes to Skull Creek to face off against his maker and nemesis and either become human again or be destroyed trying. Jake feeds on both food and sex, and needs a lot of both to be ready for the big showdown. He spies Nikki at a carnival and senses that she has resisted her own sexual impulses for so long that she would be a fantastic power source. For her part, Nikki is 30 years old and the owner of a beauty shop. She loves her small town life, with the bake sales, the nursing home bingo, her fixer upper house, etc., but has had a hard time finding a decent man. Her mother is the town slut, a woman who knows how to have a good time. Nikki’s aunt, who helped raise her, is the town angel, and is perhaps a bit too concerned with propriety. Nikki tends to view all of her choices through the lens of how those two women — the angel and the devil –  would feel about them. Her character arc involves learning to live for herself.

It’s a Blaze, so there are sex scenes, including while riding a moving motorcycle.

I actually still enjoy the vamp man/human woman romance, and I appreciated the “sexual energy” twist thrown in (the more orgasms, the more power he has and the less blood he needs to drink  — not his orgasms, of course, but his partner’s. That is how you know you for sure are reading Harlequin and not something else.) but this romance was on the unthrilling side. Jake was a standard issue hero, perfect looking, perfect in bed, manly, protective, etc., and thus bland. Nikki was more interesting, with shades of Sookie Stackhouse, and a great sense of humor. The portrayal of small town life was more cliched than the norm. I found myself looking at my iTouch to see how far along I was more than I usually do.

The book ends with an Epilogue which is actually the beginning of the next story in this series, Drop Dead Gorgeous. Neither Nikki nor Jake is in the epilogue, and I confess I was annoyed by it. Another in the series is Cody. (Others are A Body to Die For and Once Upon A Bite. If you really really love cowboy vampires, you can get all of them in an e- bundle).

Now for the question about souls. In this book, Jake says angrily to his maker “you stole my soul.” But what does that mean? When I think of all the things a soul could be, Jake has them or could have them. Possible candidates:

  • Free will
  • Consciousness and/or self-consciousness
  • Spirit in a religious sense
  • Unique personality
  • Mind
  • Essence of some unspecified kind
  • Moral goodness

Often in vamp lore the soul is code for moral goodness, which is connected to the lack of free will signaled by blood lust. So, for example, in the Buffy series, when Angel loses his soul he becomes evil, and not just evil, but seemingly incapable of being good. He bites, drinks and kills whomever he wants.

When people criticize vampire romance for “defanging the vampire” one thing they might mean is that the difference between being a vampire and being a human is indiscernible. Certainly in this book it was. Sure, Jake had to stay out of the sun, had to drank blood, and was stronger than the average male human, but other than that, nada. How different is that, really, from a pale skinned bodybuilder who has a weird diet? You can point to eternal life as the big difference, but I find the concept “eternal life” to be essentially meaningless in books like this one. Their age difference may as well be 5 years as 500 for all of the difference it makes to Jake’s character or to their relationship.  Jake sought his maker for a century, but would it have really felt different to me as a reader if he had only been looking for a decade? I don’t think so. And the HEA is eternal, but to me as a reader, it feels like any other HEA, which always has an infinite feel anyway.

What narrative force is the idea of a “lost soul” is supposed to have. What is it doing for the book if it isn’t any *thing* in particular?

7 responses so far

True Blood Season 3 Preview Post

May 15 2010 Published by under Sookie Stackhouse, Vampires

As we gear up for the third season of True Blood, beginning June 13, the first full preview was just released. Click here to view it.

This post contains some spoilers.

Just as the first two seasons were loosely based on the first two of Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, so the third season will be based on the third book, Club Dead (which I review here). As we saw in the finale of season 2 of True Blood, Sookie’s vampire boyfriend Bill Compton goes missing. In the show, he vanishes in the middle of a marriage proposal, but in the book, after a period of distancing behavior (he is always holed up with his computer, to Sookie’s dismay) Bill leaves for an extended, mysterious “business trip” to Seattle. Later, after she is attacked by a were at Merlotte’s, Sookie learns — from Eric and Pam — that Bill was on some kind of business for the Queen of Louisiana (Sophie Ann), but has returned to his sire, Lorena, and is now in terrible danger.

Here is a cute promo poster:

Unlike the TV show, readers of the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries have had no knowledge to this point of who sired Bill, when, why or how (actually, Bill’s origin story is never told in the books, making the TV Civil War and roaring Twenties vignettes completely unique to the show). The addition of origin stories, including Eric’s, was an interesting choice on Ball’s part. I confess I felt their lack as I read the books, but perhaps I have just been conditioned to think of vampires as an “other” whose existence needs explanation, while Harris wanted readers to think of them as no more mysterious than humans. That said, despite finding the character of Eric’s sire Godric intriguingly enhanced on the show (and Season 3 will have lots of flashbacks of Eric and Godric), I haven’t been thrilled with them.

In Club Dead, a furious and heartbroken Sookie nevertheless does the right thing (by her lights) and sets off for Mississippi to rescue Bill. There, she is under the protection of Acide Herveaux, a were, and we are introduced to a new paranormal element (Merlotte’s owner Sam is a shifter, quite different in Harris’s universe from weres). Weres are pack animals, with a tendency to aggression. They are anxiously waiting to see how the vampires’ “coming out” goes for them among the humans. Some weres want to follow suit. The title of the book, Club Dead, is the nickname of the Mississippi bar where the weres hang out.

This is the book where Harris deviated completely from the romance script. Not only does Harris introduce a fourth potential suitor in Alcide (leading some to call “The Anita Blake” effect on her), but what happens between Bill and Sookie is surprising, shocking, and sad.

I will be very interested to see what Ball and co do with this book in Season 3 of True Blood. Overall, the casting has been great (Sookie the one major exception), and from what I can see casting of new characters continues to impress, at least visually. Here’s a shot of Alcide:

Joe Mangianello

And Alcide’s problematic girlfriend, Debbie Pelt (a character I really enjoyed):

And the vampire king of Mississippi, Russell Eddington, played by Denis O’Hare:

Here’s the regular cast promo poster:

Ball will continue to add his own elements to Harris’s universe. First, they’ve cast a beautiful new female dancer at Fangtasia, whom Eric will hook up with. Second, they’ve cast someone as a Reverend Daniels, to whom Tara’s mother will turn for comfort. A vampire love interest has been cast for Tara. Lafayette will get more screen time, as well as a boyfriend and mother, the latter played by Alfre Woodard. Also, more in store for Arlene and her relationship to the supernatural, and more with Jessica and Hoyt, the latter moving in with Jason, who continues to experience comedic sexual mishaps.

It looks like Ball will continue his signature bloody and hypersexualized tone, and that includes accelerating the timetable of Sookie and Eric’s complex developing relationship (notice her come on to him in the preview).

I enjoyed Club Dead a lot, especially the introduction of Alcide and the weres. Readers will recall a very memorable final (or near final) scene with Eric, Bill, and Sookie. My eyes may be deceiving me, but I thought I may have seen evidence of it in the preview.

While I would have loved it if Tara and her mother would have gone the way of the maenad, there’s a lot to look forward to come June 13.

8 responses so far

Vampire Romance: Dead or Undead?

Apr 08 2010 Published by under Vampires

Is it time to stick a fang in a once beloved subgenre?

“No more vampires!” is the headline of a recent interview at GalleyCat with Lit Agent Caryn Wiseman who specializes in children’s and middle grade for The Andrea Brown Literary Agency. She says:

Funny middle-grade, horror, dystopian, steampunk, multicultural fiction. No more vampires, werewolves or zombies. I’d like to see a middle-grade or YA novel that explores a fresh, new paranormal category or a new twist on a dystopian world.

I was preparing for a Vampire Romance roundtable at last week’s Popular Culture Association conference, and it occurred to me that there hasn’t been much buzz lately about vampire romance in Romanceland.

Is this the end of the fang?

I decided the experts would know, so I asked them. And here’s what they said:

Paranormal Romance author Michele Hauf, while agreeing that “straight vampire romances” are a little harder to find lately, notes that:

Urban Fantasy has nudged into the genre and now you find publishers stamping ‘paranormal romance’ on an urban fantasy that may or may not feature a significant romance in the story.   I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.  It’s vamp romance evolving and influencing other ‘genres’ within the paranormal.

As for straight vampire romances that feature either hero or heroine as vampire (and the other could be mortal or another creature) I took a browse through my Ultimate VampList, specifically the Romance list, to see what titles jumped out at me as from an author who is more well known and has had success with a vampire romance series.  Popular authors and series include: Marta Acosta’s Casa Dracula novels, Amanda Ashley, Christine Feehan’s Dark Series, Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark, Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunters, Michelle Rowen’s Immortality Bites, Lynsay Sands’ Argeneau Vampires, Kerrelyn Sparks’s Love At Stake series.

From a writer’s point of view, I have to say that most editors are still hungry for vampires in romance, as long as it’s not same old/same old.  They are looking for a new twist, which may be why we’re seeing the vamp roms alter and morph into something bigger and more than just your simple boy bites girl story.

Michele was kind enough to share with me a graph she compiled of vampire romances published by year:

It would be really interesting to know how 2009 panned out in the end — was 2008 the beginning of a downward trend, or a blip? ParanormalRomance.org has a list with 56 titles for 2009, but I have no idea how it compares Michele Hauf’s list (do they count the same publishers? Do you count pubs like Ellora’s Cave? Should we count YA?).

Marta Acosta, author of the Casa Dracula series, concurs with Michele Hauf on the move to UF:

From what I’ve seen, there’s a strong move toward urban fantasy with multiple paranormal characters in conflict. I don’t know if readers burned out on vampire-only stories, or if writers wanted to move beyond the vampire-only stories. I do sometimes feel as if many writers are going overboard. You have books with every sort of paranormal creature thrown in the mix and sloppy worldbuilding.

But, I asked her, are there any newer successful vamp rom series? After making the point, using Charlaine Harris as an example, that series popularity is often a slow build, she name checks the following:

Jeaniene Frost’s Night Huntress series
Keri Arthur’s Riley Jenson Guardian series
Molly Harper’s comic Jane Jameson books

In terms of trends, Acosta notes that YA vampire books are big:

Vampire Academy books by Richelle Mead
Chicagoland Vampire books by Chloe Neill
Blue Bloods books by Melissa de La Cruz
Morganville Vampires by Rachel Caine
Darkest Powers books by Kelley Armstrong
Vampire Kisses books by Eileen Schreiber

And we also now have the “half-vampire book. Generally there’s a protagonist who’s half vamp and half were, which give inherent conflict” she adds.

Margaret L. Carter, horror, fantasy, and paranormal romance novelist, is also the author of Different Blood: The Vampire as Alien (2004) (Amber Quill Press — also on Amazon).

Carter is in agreement that the mixing of genres in vampire fiction will continue as a major trend, but she adds that:

Contrary to the dominant themes of earlier vampire romance, the vampire who hates his or her “cursed” existence has become relatively rare; more often than not, contemporary vampires seem to be well adjusted to their condition.

On the topic of series, she notes that

Contemporary series seem to satisfy readers’ and publishers’ demand for “more of the same, but different” by either featuring a different couple in each book but with the same background and ongoing cast of characters or following the development of one couple’s relationship through several books.

Carter listed a few of the new titles that have caught her eye, including the above mentioned Molly Harper, Jeaniene Frost, and Lynsay Sands, and also Michele Bardsley’s Broken Heart series (the suburban, domestic milieu is interestingly different, and her background for the books featurescomplex world-building) and Trisha Telep’s two volumes of The Mammoth Books of Vampire Romance (1 and 2) (2009).

Speaking of Michele Bardsley, the nationally bestselling author of paranormal romance (In September 2010, the seventh book in the Broken Heart series, Cross Your Heart, will be out in bookstores, and she just sold two more stories in the series) really likes:

Katie MacAlister’s Dark Ones series
Dakota Cassidy’s Accidentals series
Kerrelyn Sparks Love at Stake series

She adds:

The Young Adult genre is experiencing the most market growth thanks to Twilight. Two of my favorite YA series are Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy books and Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires. With shows like True Blood, Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries … I think vampires and romance will be around for a long while.

Amanda, of LoveVampires.com, a popular website with dedicated to reviewing a range of urban fantasy, paranormal romances, horror novels, literary classics, and YA, says:

Certainly mainstream publishers are no longer publishing the types of vampire romances that I started out reading over 10 years ago. There seems to be a much greater divergence of paranormal types (shapeshifters, angels, dragons, fey, etc.) chosen to be the romantic leads and a heavier reliance on fantasy sub-plots in the story background to ratchet up the over-all story excitement level. Kresley Cole’s books would be a prime example of this and she gets the mix of romance and fantasy just right each time, making her IAD series books hugely readable and hugely popular. I think authors and publishers have seen the popularity of books like this and obviously want to produce more like them to satisfy the market.

Vicky London of VampireGenre.com, another popular website which reviews vampire novels from contemporary paranormal authors, agrees with the prevailing sentiment:

I do feel like the trend is very much moving towards fantasy and urban fantasy rather than traditional romance stories peopled by vampires. There are a few authors still continuing this type of writing such as Lynsay Sands and Amanda Ashley but I think they are quickly becoming the minority. The vampire books I’ve enjoyed reading in the past few years are as you say about a larger more complex world of supernatural creatures. Writers like Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison and Charlaine Harris are excellent examples of the success of the trend.

Particia Altner, a former librarian, is the proprietor of Patricia’s Vampire Notes. She is the editor of Vampire Readings: An Annotated Bibliography (1998).

There are many excellent vampire romances being published. When browsing the shelves of the local B&N, it’s not unusual to get into a conversation with a customer or a bookseller about the paranormal romances in general, but inevitably the topic turns to “what’s a good vampire romance”. Maybe these conversations happen to me because it’s my focus, but, I do believe there is still a high interest.

I’ve been keeping track (as much as possible ) of new books coming out monthly that have a vampire theme, and many of them are romances or have strong romantic themes. Let’s face it: the allure of the dark, seductive kiss has been around for a long time. Hints of it can be found in Dracula. Even the powerful slayer Buffy had vampire lovers – Angel and Spike. That lucky girl!

In the newer world of paranormal romance the sexual situations are frequent and explicit. That’s the norm and has been for awhile. (LKH may have been one of the first to do this in print.)  In 1998, when I published Vampire Readings, several titles were vampire romances, but the love scenes were mostly smooches with the hero admiring the heroine’s beautiful but mostly clothed body and her shapely ankles. Not anymore! I’m wondering if the rise of e-publishers like Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, etc. have helped stretch the boundaries.

LA Banks, bestselling author of the Vampire Huntress and Crimson Moon series, has a few things to say about the popularity of the subgenre. Banks, recipient of the 2008 Essence Storyteller of the Year award, has written over 35 novels and contributed to 12 novellas, writing under various pseudonyms, in diverse genres including romance, women’s fiction, crime/suspense thrillers, and paranormal.

This really explains my use of metaphor and the use of the genre to make deep parallels to the things troubling me in society. I believe that all fiction is metaphor–and if you look at the work of some of the “greats” in history (not that I am, just using them as a reference point :-) )… they used their platform to speak out against things facing society by making people feel. Take Dickens, Shakespeare, the list is very reputable and long, where social activism came in the form of fiction sometimes hidden in the most obscure of genres.

Right now I believe the fascination with vampires has everything to do with our nation’s perpetual youth consciousness — plastic surgery, supplements, Viagra ( :-) ), face creams, wrinkle banishers, gyms, et al. Americans want to stay young and live forever. Growing old is not a sign of evolution or reality or even a badge of honor any longer… it is looked upon as a weakness or a disease, not the normal course of events. It’s very interesting. Right behind youth is money and fame–put them together and you have the perfect storm for vampire novels :)

When I asked specifically about the impact of Twilight, Shiloh Walker, best-selling author of fantasy and paranormal romance novels with Ellora’s Cave and Samhain, writes:

The vamp genre isn’t done… the fantastic thing about fiction is that it can be limitless. If the writer’s imagination is fertile, there’s no telling what she can do with a particular sub-genre.

Edward isn’t indicative of all vamp romance.  He’s just one particular type of hero, and he’s not necessarily indicative of that many ‘vamp’ heroes-he thinks he’s the monster, but we can shift that to contemporary.  In contemporary romance, he’d be the  ‘bad boy’-the one guy that  is ‘bad’ for the heroine.   We can shift him to historical and he’s the ‘bastard’ son who will never amount to anything.  But he’s certainly not indicative of all vamp romance.  That’s saying all vampire romance is the same, and that’s not true.  It would be like saying all literary fiction is the same, or all science fiction is the same.  Every writer brings their own unique voice to the story-there are dozens of writers who try their hand at vamp romance, which means you’ve got dozens of different twists of vampire romance.

Writers can take this tale and reshape it, retell it a hundred times, and it always comes out different-why?  Because every writer’s voice is different, every writer’s imagination is different.  It isn’t necessarily the tale that’s all that different.  It’s  the individual writer’s spin on that tale, how we see things, how we view things, how we interpret things.

My particular opinion is that Edward isn’t the end unless every writer decides to start writing all vamps to mimic him.

Nor do I think vampire romance is done.  Yes, the market is definitely seeing it’s fair share of them right now, but that is how trends work.  It’s riding a high now, and in a few years, it will level off, but there will still be those readers who want the vamps-I’ll probably be one of them.  I’ve been reading vamps sicen the 90s-then it was Linda Lael Miller and Maggie Shayne-way before Stephanie Meyer, Laurell K. Hamilton or JR Ward came onto the scene.

The trend will level.  That doesn’t mean it will disappear.  Vamp lovers will always be here, so there will likely always be a market.  If there’s a market, there will be a need for stories.  The trick is having a solid story-a solid world-not just jumping on the band wagon and having a ‘brotherhood’ or a ‘vampire hunter’ or what have you.  If writers are writing just because it’s ‘hot’ or just because ‘everybody else is doing it’… eh, then they’ll move on to the next trend.  Me?  I’m always going to have something a little weird going on, whether it’s vampire, shapeshifter, psychic… that’s just how my mind works. But I’m realistic.  I know in a few years, the trend will level.  And a few years after that?  It will swing back up to the top.  That’s how trends work.

So, no, it doesn’t look like the end of the bloodline for our fanged friends, although they are going to have to get used to bumping shoulders with a host of nonhuman beings and finding themselves in a wide variety of perhaps unfamiliar genres.

PS. I have totally lost by mojo, after 10 posts, for talking about PCA, but if any readers want to know more about the vampire romance panel I was on with Heide Crawford of the Dept of Germanic Languages at Kansas University, chaired by Amanda Hobson of Ohio University, just ask in the comments, and I will be happy to share.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts with me via email!

14 responses so far

PCA Romance Panel 7: Romancing Vampires: Toothsome Heroes and Happy Endings

Apr 03 2010 Published by under Pop Culture Association 2010, Vampires

IMPORTANT NOTE:  I have disabled comments on this post deliberately.

Romance VII: Romancing Vampires: Toothsome Heroes and Happy Endings
Session Chair: Sarah S. G. Frantz, Fayetteville State University

“Sexual Exchange and Submission in Dracula: A Precursor to Gay Erotica Romance”‖ Haley Stokes

Homoerotic sexual exchange in Dracula as precursor to paranormal romance

Hard to fulfill genre requirements with two men. Tendency to write chicks with dicks, due to need for binary opposition between partners.

Conservative ideals of the genre – one partner, one true love, lifetime satisfaction with one partner  – pose unique  challenges for m/m romance.

Heteronormative space is still what is being negotiated.

Close textual analysis of Dracula, emphasizing homoeroticism of Dracula.

Story of Harker as story of bondage, homoerotic desire (cites several studies)

Dynamic of Harker and Dracula’s relationship does not require penetration, even if he wants to be bitten.

It’s about submission. Everything that happens to him in Dracula’s castle depends on the fact of his submission and his willingness/desire to submit.

Harker and Dracula experience a parody of married life that Harker is resisting. Harker cooks. Shared clothing. Etc.

Texts demonstrate a series of power exchanges stand in for sexual acts. Today, romance writers don’t have to do this.

Read Dracula as early attempt at sexual negotiation, creating a couple where the familiar binary does not exist.

“Twilight and Romeo And Juliet: The Portrayal of Love and Narrative Perspective”‖ Brent Gibson, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

Language of Twilight puts it in tradition of the religion of love, a phrase coined by CS Lewis. Language of Christianity transferred to courtly love.

Escape v. rivalry

Escapism is fine, but if values of Christianity are taken seriously within story, love and God are rivals. One has to be subordinated to the other.

Talks about how battle between Godly and courtly love is worked out in literature of the medieval period, such as Tristan and Isolde, Troilus and Cressida, Paolo and Francesca

Continues through Renaissance, this battle between the two religions, Christianity and love.

Romeo and Juliet. This one’s a little different. They get married before consummating their love which suggests a proper subordination of religion of love to religion of God. But in other ways increases tension between two sets of values. Audience would have seen suicide as sending the victim to hell, yet they are pictured as entering paradise of lovers.

Twilight. One of many romances influenced by Romeo and Juliet and exemplifies another alteration in this tradition. Both religions are taken seriously. Not kept separate nor kept in tension. Two lovers literally idolize on another, language is very clear on this. Ex. Edward saying his lie to Bella in New Moon was “blackest kind of blasphemy”.

Meyer brings in actual religion. Edward says he is going to hell, the literal hell of Christian theology. Later he states he believes in a creator. We are told Carlyle is a Christian, he believes in God.

In Twilight, romance is elevated above religion in inversion of Medieval tactic. Ex. In Eclipse Edward agrees to make love to Bella prior to marriage, despite his earlier claim that he wouldn’t because it was the one Commandment he didn’t break. See also his views on Bella’s soul and making her a vampire.

Basically his Godly love goes out the window when Bella wants something.

Interesting that within the world of the story religion is taken seriously, and Meyer herself takes it seriously, but it is still subordinated to romance.

[A good comment on this from Margaret Toscano, Angela’s mom, who knows what she is talking about, the issue of Mormonism, and how in the Mormon version of heaven you have a big loving family,inclusive of romantic love, such that for a Mormon writer like Meyer, these two kinds of love are not so much in tension.]

“Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing: Christine Feehan’sCarpathian Heroes:”‖ Kat Schroeder, University of Washington

She wrote this paper for a class on gender studies in the media.

Who is reading the books? Younger and younger, girls as young as 10.

By age 14 reading adult series romance fiction.

Children consume media as a method to develop own views of intimate relationships in lieu of parental models.

Feehan claims all her heroines are “strong women”

CS defines strong in comparison to their male counterparts.

She focuses on full length novels where heroine started as human or believed themselves ot be human.

She describes Carpathians. Race of “not vampires”—turn into vampires unless they find their “light”, their mates.

Research Question 1 – do they reflect a relative parity of romance partners?

–age, maturity level, finances, career, sexual experience, general maturity

Research Question 11—DO novels give actual equivalent voice and agency to both the hero and heroines. Does one partner have power over the other?

Results:

Age – men much older (very funny chart here). Men b/t ages of 600-2000, women b/t age 23-27

Wealth – All but one of the women are either destitute or unemployed or the narrative doesn’t tell us; all of the men are vastly wealthy

Childhoods – all heroines had profoundly troubled childhoods while men, except one, were treasured

Sexual experience – only 3 not virgins, 2 excused by rape, 1 was widow but had marriage to a man with whom she didn’t enjoy sex

Her voice leads to his agency. Ex. She is upset, he seduces her, sometimes with force. She is angrym, he laughs.

Also TSTL heroines. Describes one heroine as being brilliant (surgeon at 18) but they aren’t (the surgeon has all the signd of being a vampire and has no idea what is happenign to her, for example. Also she jumps out a window instead of seeking help.)

Control dynamics:

–homicidal jealousy as a measure for love

–possessive controlling behaviors

                Naming convention (enfant, bebe, little one, diminutizing to a profound degree, unlike “dear”)

                In one book, Darius renames heroine, was called Rusty, he renames her Tempest. From that point forward, Feehan writes heroine from point of view of hero’s idealized version of her “Tempest”.

[Audience member notes in discussion that all of this is true in JR Ward’s BDB as well, and asks “what do we get from this?”.]

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