Twilight and New Moon by Stephenie Meyer (unabridged audio books read by Ilyana Kadushin)

Curiosity gets me every time. I often feel compelled to try to understand the appeal of popular literary and cinematic phenomena. I've read and seen many things I was not actually interested in, just for that reason.

Many of them proved to be major disappointments, such as Forrest Gump, The Da Vinci Code, and The Dark Knight. But some have led me to a long-lasting appreciation of their respective merits, like The Crying Game and the Harry Potter novels.

Despite its apparently huge success, I had never even heard of the Twilight saga until the fourth one, Breaking Dawn, was being published, but with all the unavoidable hype surrounding the release of the film adaptations, I decided I needed to see what the big deal was. I started with the first one, Twilight, read on unabridged audiobook by Ilyana Kadushin (You've Been Warned) — and I was completely drawn in.

In case you don't know, Twilight begins the story of Bella Swan, who leaves her soon-to-be-remarried mother to move in with her father, the chief of police of Forks, Washington. Bella is a clumsy teenager who is inevitably drawn to the pale and mysterious Edward Cullen, one of a "family" of vampires who abstain from human blood. (Their patriarch, Carlisle, is even a doctor devoted to saving lives.)

Author Stephenie Meyer draws the complicated relationship between Bella and Edward with affectionate detail as they navigate the multiple conflicts inherent in a vampire–human romance. And don't think for a moment that Twilight isn't a romance — fans of the brutal variety of bloodsucker should stay away. But I was completely absorbed by Meyer's easy prose and Bella's engaging narration enough to go straight on to the next book.

New Moon begins with the Cullens' moving away from Forks to avoid putting Bella in more danger after a birthday celebration for her goes horribly awry. But Bella can't stand being away from Edward. She gets pretty whiny and mopey here, and I almost stopped listening, but reader Kadushin fully embodies the feeling in the text to the point that I began to feel genuine sympathy for Bella, so I stuck it out.

Bella even begins to do reckless things simply in order to hear Edward's advising voice in her head. This includes buying a couple of motorcycles, something her father would be extremely against. So, she hides them at the home of her childhood friend, Jacob Black. Anyone who has seen the trailer to the New Moon film will know that werewolves are a part of this story, but none show up for ten chapters. So, as with vampire aficionados, lycanthrope lovers may be bored.

In the meantime, Meyer fills the space with the deepening friendship between Bella and the two-years-younger Jacob as he slowly falls in love with her. This will lead to the triangular conflict so often discussed by fans of the series as Bella sees the benefits and drawbacks of each individual, and they both fight to stay uppermost in her mind.

References to Romeo and Juliet abound, both subtle and trite (the first book was reportedly styled upon Pride and Prejudice), and New Moon is generally a weaker offering than Twilight, but it presents information and relationship development that is built upon later in the series, and it is still an absorbing, if not particularly well-written, read.

I only got about four chapters into the third book, Eclipse, before putting it down in favor of other books, but it does attempt to draw me back into its thrall occasionally. Luckily, it's not a complex story, so it is easy to exit and reenter with little loss of comprehension. But at this point, I feel I know enough about the draw of the series through Twilight and New Moon to not have to see it to its conclusion.

At least not right now....

Guest Bloggers: Kelley Armstrong (author of Waking the Witch) and Marjorie M. Liu (author of A Wild Light) interview each other about dead mothers in their fiction

Today I have the honor of welcoming authors Kelley Armstrong and Marjorie M. Liu to the pages of Somebody Dies. Authors of over a dozen novels each, Armstrong's most recent is Waking the Witch, the latest in her "Women of the Otherworld" series, and Liu's newest is A Wild Light, the third of her "Hunter Kiss" books.

In this exclusive exchange, Kelley Armstrong and Marjorie M. Liu discuss maternal murder, appropriate since both of their main characters have mothers who were murdered. In Armstrong’s series, Savannah Levine has dealt with that over the course of the series, but it, of course, still looms large in her character. The same holds true for Maxine Hunter, the main character in Liu’s novels.

Here the authors discuss more about how having murdered mothers have affected the main characters of their novels. Both Waking the Witch and A Wild Light are on shelves (virtual and otherwise) today.

Kelley Armstrong: When we met Savannah in the second Otherworld book (Stolen) she was twelve and her mother, Eve, had just died. Eve had been targeted by a group kidnapping powerful supernaturals. When they came for her, Savannah was at home playing sick. She's always felt, then, that if she hadn't been skipping school, her mother wouldn't have needed to protect her and could have fought off her kidnappers or escaped.

When Eve is killed trying to escape the compound, Savannah knows she was her main reason for escaping (otherwise, Eve would have waited it out). That's a lot of guilt to put on a twelve-year-old.

I always knew that when I gave Savannah her own story, she'd need to deal with that guilt. In Waking the Witch, then, I mirrored her tragedy with a similar one. She goes to a small town to investigate three murders and immediately bumps into the preadolescent daughter of a victim, who is investigating her mother's death. That takes what would have been "just a case" for Savannah and turns it into something very personal.

Marjorie M. Liu: Oh, man. I could probably write a whole book about the archetype of orphans in fiction. In Maxine's case, her mother was her entire world, the only human person she could count on as both friend, protector, and confidant. So when she was murdered — in front of Maxine, no less — it totally ripped her heart out.

It set her adrift, made her a child of the world (for lack of a better term), belonging to no one and no place except herself. Without another person to ground her, she was outside the world, observing it from a distance that was influenced by both her upbringing and broken heart.

So that's her mental state when the series begins. Which isn't to say that Maxine is moping around being depressed. She's out fighting the bad guys, doing what needs to be done. Telling herself to be strong because others need her.

But she needs people, too, and I always knew that her story would be more about her emotional and spiritual journey than the physical war between herself and the demons. That wasn't a random decision on my part. As readers will discover in A Wild Light, Maxine is power. And it's the strength of her heart — the goodness of her heart — that will determine whether the people of Earth live or die or become enslaved.

Many thanks to both authors for agreeing to interview each other for Somebody Dies. Don't forget to pick up copies of Waking the Witch and A Wild Light from your favorite bookstore.

Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales by Seabury Quinn, edited by Gene Christie (Black Dog Books)

Author Seabury Quinn is probably best known to modern readers for his series of short stories featuring occult detective Jules de Grandin, as well as for his marked influence on the works of fellow author Robert E. Howard. But Quinn's career spanned sixty years: from 1917, the year "The Law of Movies" (a nonfiction article included as an appendix to this collection) saw print, to 1977, when his novel Alien Flesh was published, with at least 150 other works in the intervening years.

Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited and with an introduction and bibliography by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books, collects Quinn's earliest known fiction along with other rarities, including the aforementioned "Law of the Movies." It is a humorous and insightful look at the way legal matters are presented on film that is just as applicable today as it was in 1917, even though its examples consist entirely of obscure silent films (none of which appear to be available on video).

The title story, "Demons of the Night," is just the kind of derivative tale — familiar but with a twist — that many an author has used as his entry to published genre fiction, and it is wholly entertaining if taken in that spirit. (The ending especially is that of an oft-told campfire story.)

"Was She Mad?" is reminiscent of classic Poe with genuine horror contained in it. Though many authors have tackled the "possessed artifact" tale, Quinn's "The Stone Image" manages to be surprisingly effective at chilling the spine, even though its tropes are all too familiar.

"Painted Gold" is one of a few surprises found by editor Gene Christie in his searches. Neither it or "Romance Unawares" have been reprinted since their publication in Young's Magazine in 1919 and 1920, respectively. In the former, Lt. Rathburn Thomas has little appreciation for the feminine form until the continuous company of men in the service puts him on the prowl. Quinn warns us with his trademark erudite humor: "When a perfectly nice young man begins to act in this way, there is danter ahead, particularly for him; for it is from such that the victims of the Strange Woman are recruited."

But despite this protest, "Painted Gold" is an unexpectedly sweet romantic tale of a fellow who meets a beautiful woman but is put off by her rouge and lipstick, since that was only worn by the cheap girls back home. "Romance Unawares" is another truly sweet story of two life-long friends whom the whole town expect to be married and who find out (of course) that they really cannot do without each other. These stories show a different side of Seabury Quinn than the other early tales in Demons of the Night, but it's one I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

"The Cloth of Madness" is most famous for its appearance in Weird Tales, but it was actually first printed in Young's, too. It's a classic tale of the cuckold getting revenge in one of the most original ways I've read. The fiction of Demons of the Night closes with two of Quinn's Major Sturdevant stories, "Ravished Shrines" and "Out of the Land of Egypt" — neither of which impressed me, though Loomis is an engaging narrator — and two from his Professor Forrester series, "In the Fog" and "The Black Widow."

It is in the Professor Forrester tales, especially "In the Fog," that I found the most direct antecedent to the style of Robert E. Howard, both in the constant action and in the varied, poetic vocabulary. "In the Fog" finds Forrester locking himself inadvertently into a "house of mysteries" that is like a trip to the Orient, and that will require all of his myriad (and mildly implausible though wildly entertaining) talents to escape alive.

I especially admired how Quinn uses the house to allow the reader to experience a globe-trotting adventure without his hero's having to leave Washington. "In the Fog" is the first of the series that appeared in Read Detective Tales throughout 1927 and 1928, and explains the origin of the woman who would later be his ward. "The Black Widow" is equally engaging, though more a mystery than an adventure.

Editor and compiler Christie brings Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales to a satisfying conclusion by offering the reader the breadth of Quinn's published work with an extensive bibliography — as full as is currently known, anyway. Given the organic nature of the discovery process, Christie considers the bibliography a work in progress and gives contact information in the introductory paragraph, welcoming any new information the reader can offer.

Genre Fiction Sale! 36 "Summer Reads" for $2.00 from Dorchester Publications through July 30th.

               

The Vampire Affair by Livia Reasoner (paranormal romance)

Everybody thinks Michael Brandt is a millionaire tycoon playboy with nothing on his mind but his money and his seemingly endless string of beautiful women. Jessie Morgan, a freelance reporter of Native American descent (she was raised by her grandmother on a Cherokee reservation) is on assignment from a tabloid to get the scoop on Michael's latest alleged starlet romance.

In pursuit of her story, Jessie gets by Michael's security and stumbles onto the truth: Brandt is actually the latest in a family of generations of vigilante vampire hunters. Now that she knows, he can't just let her go, so Michael takes Jessie back to his Bruce Wayne–style headquarters/mansion and opens himself up to her.

They soon fall for each other — the fair Eastern European and the dark Native American — and this causes Michael pain because he doesn't want to lose Jessie the way he lost Charlotte years ago. He's lost one love to these creatures before. Will he lose another? He will if vampire overlord Jefferson Rendell has anything to say about it. Some people just never learn....

Author Livia Reasoner (also a writer of popular mysteries under the name Livia J. Washburn) offers readers all they expect and more in her Harlequin debut for the Silhouette Nocturne paranormal romance line. Traditional romance and vampire tropes get a good workout (as do Michael and Jessie in a steamy locker-room shower scene), but mostly The Vampire Affair is just a ripping yarn.

It's full of action and suspense, teeming with emotional conflict and sexual tension, and peopled with engaging characters in surprisingly plausible situations that make it easy to suspend the necessary amount of disbelief. Reasoner exhibits considerable talent in the equal effectiveness of both romance and battle scenes — with an exciting scene of bloodlust well balanced with a steamy scene of the other kind.

It's a bit on the long side, and the ending will surprise no one, but the Native American connection offers an original twist. The Vampire Affair is more than worth your time. It's pure pulp, with few surprises but lots of entertainment. Its combination of romance, suspense, action, horror, and adventure are just the kind of escapist reading this reader seeks.

Reasoner is currently working on her followup to The Vampire Affair, a werewolf novel (Enemy of the Wolf) that was changed from a shape shifter novel (Shifting Affections) due to the demands of the marketplace. Reasoner is a true professional who never forgets that publishing is a business, and you must change to meet its needs, not the other way around. Read about it in her blog post Do You Write from the Heart or for the Bucks?

Wraiths and Worlds by Darrin Charles Wilson (dark fantasy)

Six years ago, I read author Darrin Wilson's debut novel, Pine Shallow, and saw behind the unpolished writing that there was an original thinker with a talent for storytelling. Since then, Wilson's writing has improved markedly, and he's still coming up with new ideas.

Wraiths and Worlds is a formerly online serial novel now available in print with a previously unseen ending. Tired of playing publishing games, for this story Wilson went straight to the Internet. He posted the first chapters and was about to move on to his next project when he received inspiration in the form of readers from around the world wanting to know what happened next.

The story concerns Grace Tiffen, a black, 23-year-old law student who dies in a car crash and finds herself naked in the middle of an Arctic wasteland. Helped by some other local denizens, she learns that this is the afterlife but that God has left. The one person Grace really wanted to see, her father, is also absent, so she and a fellow who calls himself Deacon go off to find them both. But soon people start dying, and what kind of afterlife kills you after you get there? And what kind of afterlife does God ditch when the going gets tough?

Meanwhile, during Grace's funeral, her psychic aunt Abigail is confronted by Jonathan Sand. He's looking for a book, and he has traced it to Abigail's grandmother. When Abigail find the strange, fleshy book in her library, Sand kidnaps her and takes her on a quest through the Middle East, including a place called the Devil's Needle, where wind storms can result in death by airborne scorpion swarm. When Abigail is able to make contact with Grace, things just get weirder, like the formation of a snowy crevasse in the middle of the desert.

Wilson combines tropes from sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, mystery, and horror fiction to produce a book that has a little something for everyone. He studied and combined numerous world religions to come up with the theology he presents here. I don't usually get into books with such a high reliance on "otherworldliness" — although my appreciation for it is increasing — but Wilson's characters are so well drawn I had to know what happened. Sometimes his words get in the way of his story, but there's enough pure talent in Wraiths and Worlds to carry the reader through to the end.

Wilson was probably right to avoid traditional publishing routes with this book, since they would not know how to market it. Which genre's audience do you focus on? In any case, Wilson poses some very interesting ideas about the nature of God, and he's left plenty of room for a sequel. Wraiths and Worlds is smart fiction, that rare kind that successfully brings a new perspective to an age-old concept.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (first of the Barsoom / John Carter series)

Former Confederate captain John Carter, left with no means of income after the war, heads to Arizona and strikes a quartz mine. Trying to rescue his partner from Apaches, Carter takes a wrong turn and comes to a cave, in which he finds a large room, where he is overthrown by a paralytic gas. With a supreme effort, he attempts to move his muscles, but instead his spirit/soul/whatever leaves his body, and he thus exits the cave completely naked. Staring out at the night sky, Carter sees the planet Mars and feels called to by the god of war. He reaches out his arms, senses cold and darkness, and opens his eyes "upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars."

If you can get past that extreme leap of faith, the rest of A Princess of Mars is pretty easy to stomach. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs (author also of the numerous Tarzan stories) peoples his debut novel (expanded from the short story "Under the Moons of Mars" and serialized in All-Story before being published as a novel in 1919) with characters that are easy to identify with, though they happen to be green-skinned Martians. Though I had long heard of the stories, I was first intrigued to try this one due to its being listed in the Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns, which stated that it falls firmly into the subcategory of Space Western (the same category under which Star Wars falls).

It was primarily this, but also the fact that I had enjoyed Tarzan when I read it so long ago, that led me to seek it out — preferably in audio, through which I do most of my literary experimentation. I found the Books In Motion audio at the library. Jack Sondericker reads A Princess of Mars from the perspective of time, much as the early part of the novel suggests. His voice is that of an man much older than the protagonist, leading a semblance of retrospective realism to this fantastic tale. (The Librivox audio is also a solid interpretation, with Mark Nelson offering a professional-quality reading that can be downloaded for free.)

Because of the lighter gravity of Mars ("Barsoom" to the locals), Carter finds himself a superman among his new neighbors, able to leap 30 feet in the air and 100 feet away when threatened. The early chapters of A Princess of Mars are mostly given to writing of the expository sort, involving Carter's observations of the strange details of Martian life, peppered throughout with feats of his prowess, which impresses the seemingly unemotional Martians in the only way important to them. Carter even becomes a chieftain of the Tharks after defeating one of them.

I don't usually get into books filled with made-up names and long descriptions of the differences between Earth and whatever planet the story happens to be set on, but Burroughs manages to make it interesting through sheer imagination, with just enough things not so different to balance the very different. A Princess of Mars is such a mythic success at this, it is impossible not to get involved in the exploits of John Carter and the female prisoner he comes across, who looks very different from the green-skinned Martians and who turns out to be Dejah Thoris, red-skinned princess of Helium.

The rest of the book involves the duo's escape from Thark, as they fall for each other, get separated, then reunited, and eventually make a go of it. The ending would be a downer if I didn't know that there are numerous sequels, the first of which is The Gods of Mars. But if you're looking for a full reading experience, with plenty of action, adventure, and even romance, you'd do well to pick up a copy of A Princess of Mars.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (mixed-genre novel)

A drunk porn actor gets in a car accident, which results in burns all over his body. (The liquor he was drinking, and spilled in his lap, flares up and does an especially bad number on his penis, leaving him with little more than a flap of skin).

During his recover in the hospital, a possibly schizophrenic gargoyle sculptor named Marianne Engel visits him regularly, saying she knows him from when she was a nun working in a monastery scriptorium (a room dedicated to Bible translation and transcription) in the 14th century. Marianne tells him stories of their life together 700 years ago, as well as myriad other stories from her multilingual experience.

The Gargoyle is a completely immersive experience. Author Andrew Davidson's debut — the product of seven years of research and writing — has something for everyone: history, horror, mystery, religion, romance, terrific storytelling, and well-crafted prose.

The story of Marianne Engel and the unnamed narrator/protagonist is one of and for the ages. Not only did reading The Gargoyle entertain and literarily satisfy me, but its breadth of scope and Davidson's unconventional style (including humor that ranges from the subtle to the laugh-out-loud — there's even a throwaway Caddyshack reference that will get past a lot of people) inspired me to try new things in my own writing.

As Marianne herself states at one point, "It was apparent from the start that the writing was unlike anything I'd ever read." The Gargoyle combines portions of Dante's Inferno, the One Thousand Nights and a Night, the Gnaden-vita, the Bible, and likely others I simply didn't recognize. It is multilayered and multilingual, and even though the novel sometimes asks a little much in the realm of suspension of disbelief, Davidson never stretches plausibility too far, especially once you give yourself over to its mythic structure and its motif of arrows and fire.

Lincoln Hoppe reads the unabridged audiobook of The Gargoyle, and his grasp of the characters is stunning. From Vikings to nuns to a man with a scarred larynx to the "bitch snake" that only morphine will quiet, he offers believable portraits of all of them. And he is not slowed in the least by all the foreign idioms and accents that he is required to master. Hoppe's reading may even make the book more accessible to those that find it a difficult read.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (literary fiction)

I hesitate to slap a derisive label like "chick lit" on anything, but author Sara Gruen's third novel is a prime example of the worst kind of "women's fiction"; Water for Elephants was obviously written by a woman solely for other women, with no attempt to be realistic from the male point of view. Instead it perpetuates the romantic ideals set forth by Harlequin and its ilk — heights that no three-dimensional male can ever reach. (No wonder it was a word-of-mouth bestseller.)

This is shown most strikingly through Gruen's protagonist, Jacob Jankowski. He does not talk, think, or act like any (straight) man I have ever met. The purpose he serves, it seems, is to stand in for a lot of women's idea of what a man should be. When a man looks at another man and calls him "unshaven" with the implication that what he really means is "unclean," you know you're nowhere near reality. This type of man lives only in fiction.

Gruen even makes Jacob a virgin (though old enough to have a degree from veterinary school) so that when he and the female lead finally make it to the bed (which is inevitable in this world), it more closely match the unspoken wishes of her audience.

(Now, understand, men's fiction is no better from the woman's point of view, with the hero more often than not bedding the female lead, who then conveniently dies so he can have access to a series of new women without guilt for the expense of a succession of prostitutes. I'm not saying it's any better, but at least it's marketed to men and not a general audience.)

Gruen relies so much on stereotypes from romance novels (or even just their covers) and "chick flicks" that none of the characters in Water for Elephants ever feels like a real human being but simply an archetype playing its part in her story. The writing flows nicely, and the story is somewhat interesting if you don't mind melodrama.

Also, Gruen manages to humanize people who have previously been seen as freaks, but this was all for nought when I never believed that the narrator was telling me the truth about his gender. I actually kept waiting for that to be a "twist" in the story, and in fact was disappointed when it never came.

Plus, if a man were really telling the story, he would undoubtedly have recognized the sophomoric unintentional hilarity in the following passage: Teams of men are ... raising enormous poles.... I pass a group of ten throwing their combined weight against a single rope as a man off to the side chants, "Pull it, shake it, break it! Again—pull it, shake it, break it! Now downstake it!" [p. 34].

(Yeah, that's what she said!)