Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

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Great fun vampire novel

I have occasionally intimated that I am not a huge fan of vampires. This is not entirely true.

When I was little I was a huge Anne Rice fan and read Bram Stoker’s Dracula many many times. I loved Lost Boys and Near Dark remains my favourite vampire movie. My love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is well documented and Suzy McKee Charnas’s Vampire Tapestry is one of my favourite books of all time.1

I’m just not a fan of the idea of dead people being sexy. This goes for zombies as well as vampires. Basically the older I get the more attached I am to life and the more unsexy death seems. Once people you love have died you start to see the whole vampire thing in a very different light.

It’s one of the many reasons I adored Narrelle M. Harris’s The Opposite of Life. It’s set in Melbourne and is a wonderfully accurate portrayal of the city. In my current horribly homesick state it might not have been a good idea for me to read it. Yes, I’m a Sydney girl but I love Melbourne too. And the whole book is so very Australian it got me all teary.

But I digress. What I most loved about the book was that the vampires were So Very Dead. There is a cost to being a vampire, a large cost. These vampires don’t just get to live forever looking young and pretty without any downside. I won’t say what the price is cause the way it emerges is one of the book’s many pleasures, that, and the fact that some of Harris’s vampires aren’t always glamorous. Some are middle aged, some plump, and one, Gary, is a really daggy dresser with a huge fanboy collection of vampire literature and DVDs. Gary the vampire. He’s fabulous.

Philosophically this is a book I’m in strong agreement with.

As yet, The Opposite of Life is only published in Australia. You can probably order a copy from most booksellers there. I recommend Galaxy Books in Sydney cause they’ve always been good to me.

  1. If you haven’t read it you really must! [↩]

Posted by Justine at 19:27, 2 June 2008 under Reading, Sydney/Australia | 6 Comments »

Comments

  1. capt. cockatiel Says:

    Oh my goodness, Gary the vampire does sound fabulous…
    I doubt my parents will let me order a book from Australia (maybe if I work hard enough on convincing them…), but I will defo be on the lookout and/or waiting for more news on a US publication.

    June 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm

  2. sherwood Says:

    I’ve been writing back and forth with someone in Australia re this online con idea, and I’ve discovered there are a bunch of excellent sounding writers who really could use some airtime over here, so people can get a chance at their books.

    June 2nd, 2008 at 9:04 pm

  3. hillary! Says:

    It’s extraordinary, really, how very little notoriety Australian writers get, considering how excellent they are. Some of my favorite authors are Australian.

    Justine: BEA was held this past weekend and I was really hoping to find an ARC of HTDYF, it didn’t really occur to me until after I found Paper Towns, so my librarian and I went looking for Bloomsbury in the publishers section, but we couldn’t find them, so we figured they weren’t there, but then I found out that THEY WERE there. They must have been hiding from me just because they knew how badly I really wanted an ARC. But I got 49 books, more than half of them ARCs. So I think I can wait.

    June 2nd, 2008 at 9:56 pm

  4. Delia Says:

    Ron gave me a copy of OOL at Wiscon, and I’m set to read it any minute now. Probably on the plane to Rome, where we’re going Wednesday.

    I couldn’t wait before. Now I Really can’t wait.

    June 2nd, 2008 at 10:35 pm

  5. Michael Bush Says:

    Gary the vampire sounds excellent! Having just put a deposit on a new flat, I really shouldn’t be wondering how much it’d cost to get it in the UK. And yet…

    Really enjoyed the Buffy article, too, although I’m one of those freaks who thinks the show only really hits its stride with series four. I rarely go back to the earlier episodes. That said, I feel like I’m becoming one of those awful, whinging fans when it comes to the comic books; they’ve had their moments, but they’re just not very good (and extremely problematic, but there’s not enough room on the internet for me to unleash that beast), yet so many fans are adamant to be the exact opposite of critical about them that I feel inclined towards capslock ranting to reach some sort of balance. Sometimes fandom makes me hate myself.

    June 3rd, 2008 at 5:11 am

  6. JS Bangs Says:

    I totally agree about the vampires. Modern vampires have gotten way too emo, sulking around all night being sexy and angsty. That’s part of why my current WIP includes a real nasty, not-sexy vampire.

    Michael: I’m afraid I can’t agree with you about the shape of Buffy’s later seasons. Season 3 was the high point, and six and seven were nigh-unwatchable. The comic book “season eight” is definitely problematic, but it’s also very good.

    June 3rd, 2008 at 9:55 am

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