Posts tagged with vampires
Wild Hunger, by Chloe Neill
Chloe Neill's Wild Hunger is very clearly a spin-off. It's a fun, easy-to-follow spin-off that works reasonably well as a standalone novel, but there are plenty of areas where I felt like the author was skimming over huge chunks of characterization or background, lest she bore her preexisting fans with stuff they already knew. I definitely wish I'd started with the earlier books—not that...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Wild Hunger, by Chloe Neill
Our current Book Giveaway is Chloe Neill's novel Wild Hunger. This is a spin-off of her popular "Chicagoland Vampires" urban fantasy series, but works reasonably well as a standalone novel. A full review will follow shortly...
Darcy Bites, by Amy Elizabeth Davis
Amy Elizabeth Davis's Darcy Bites: Pride and Prejudice with Fangs combines two of my favorite things: Jane Austen and vampires. And—unlike Seth Grahame-Smith's popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies—Davis's book actually attempts to fuse her two worlds together organically, rather than injecting a few monster-fighting scenes into Austen's novel and hoping for the best...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Darcy Bites, by Amy Elizabeth Davis
This week's Book Giveaway is Darcy Bites: Pride and Prejudice with Fangs, by Amy Elizabeth Davis. As you can probably tell from the cover, this is very much a polished-up fanfiction, but I'll read nearly anything with vampires or the characters from Pride and Prejudice in it, so this is basically my catnip...
Stop trying to make Henry Cavill happen.
Hmm. They're doing their best to emphasize the "based on a book series" angle, rather than the "muuuuch better known as a video game" approach to promote The Witcher, but this doesn't look like Netflix's answer to the high-minded fantasy of Game of Thrones...
Slayer, by Kiersten White
In my recent review of the BOOM Comics Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, I wondered if the Buffy-centric storytelling well had finally run dry. Bestselling author Kiersten White's new spinoff novel Slayer proves that there is still some life in this 'verse...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Slayer, by Kiersten White
Our latest Book Giveaway is Kiersten White's Slayer, a book that I enjoyed far, far more than I expected to, considering the quality of recent Buffy the Vampire Slayer-themed output. A full review will follow shortly, and this giveaway will run through 5/10/19...
A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness
Nine times out of ten, a book is better than its movie or television adaptation. No matter how talented the filmmaker, the literary medium—which has no need to worry about production schedules or actors' salaries—is usually best. That isn't always true, however, and Deborah Harkness's novel A Discovery of Witches is a prime example...
Weekly Book Giveaway: A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness
We are currently giving away a copy of Deborah Harkness's novel A Discovery of Witches, which the author describes as a book about books. I'm going to post our full review shortly, but: no, it isn't. A.S. Byatt's Possession is a book about books, as are Jasper Fforde's Tuesday Next series and...
Immortally Yours, by Lynsay Sands
It's been years since I've read one of Lynsay Sands's vampire romance novels, but they have always stood out in my mind: in her long-running Argeneau series, vampires are not the result of dark magic or whatever, but rather the products of blood-powered nanotechnology first developed in Lost Atlantis. The quality of her individual installments might vary, but Sands gets all the gold stars for coming up with such a delightfully weird premise...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Immortally Yours, by Lynsay Sands
Keeping up with our Halloween theme, our current Book Giveaway is Lynsay Sands's latest Argeneau novel Immortally Yours. I'm not sure what installment this is (possibly #18,567), but Sands is a reliably fun writer, so my hopes are high. A full review will follow shortly...
I approve of the cover, at least?
Pajiba recently posted an update on the forthcoming A Discovery of Witches TV series, based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. The show is being adapted by Bad Wolf Television (a company run by two former Doctor Who producers), will star Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer, and the...
And I Darken, by Kiersten White
As one might expect from a story about a gender-swapped version of Vlad the Impaler, Kiersten White's And I Darken is heavy on angst and violence. On the other hand, it is also unexpectedly well-researched and thoughtfully constructed—despite the lurid nature of her subject matter, White has written a respectable alternate-history fiction, not the YA equivalent of Dracula Untold...
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black
If you can stomach the first scene in Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, you're sitting pretty for the rest of the book. The story opens with a massacre: when Tana wakes up in a bathtub after a teen party, she discovers that she has drunkenly dozed through a massive vampire attack. Most of her friends are dead, but her ex-boyfriend Aidan has survived...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black
This week's Book Giveaway is Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown. Our full review will be posted later today, but here's a quick take: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown reminded me of my all-time favorite vampire story, Vivian Vande Velde's Companions of the Night, and I can give no higher compliment than that...
Vampire Academy on screen
They've released a trailer for the upcoming Vampire Academy movie, and I'm not sure what to think. While I liked the first book, the rest of the series left me cold, so my memory's a little fuzzy, but...
Jane Jones: Worst. Vampire. Ever., by Caissie St. Onge
Caissie St. Onge's novel Jane Jones: Worst. Vampire. Ever. is an entertaining but uneven take on the joys—and many, many sorrows—of life as a blood-sucking perpetual teenager. Jane Jones has been a high school student for decades, but it never gets any easier. Her parents are still ridiculously overprotective (even though Jane is actually ninety-odd years old), she has nothing in common with her human classmates, and her vampire peers despise her for having a blood allergy...
Vampire fashion
Speaking of the intersection between literature and fashion, HBO and HSN have created a makeup line inspired by True Blood. The collection will include a perfume by Givaudan, Deborah Lippmann-designed nail polish and lip color, and undefined "luxury home goods" from D.L. & Co...
Blood feud? I'd like to think so.
Heh. According to THR, Anne Rice is not a fan of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Ms. Rice recently wrote:"[My characters] feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun... They would never h...
Interview with the Vampire goes graphic
Yen Press and Anne Rice are planning a single-volume graphic novel adaptation of Rice's 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire, due out in fall 2012. Rather to my surprise, I really like this firs...
Extra cheesy
Meg and I went to the bookstore last night and encountered this:According to Lynsay Sands's promotional blurb, this novel is an "absolute delight". I don't know about that, but Meg and I certainl...
I was hoping this trend would be beyond tired by 2012.
Twentieth Century Fox has purchased the film rights for Seth Grahame-Smith's novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. (Grahame-Smith also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and is therefore the...
Insatiable, by Meg Cabot
Meg Cabot's new novel Insatiable is full of nods to the current vampire craze (love triangles, seemingly ordinary heroines with mysterious abilities, broody-yet-hot dudes with weird dietary habits...
Brace yourselves, horror fans...
If you're looking for a genuinely creepy take on the vampire genre (versus, say, a mopey, dopey, heavy-on-the-sixpack-abs one), check out the trailer for Let Me In, the upcoming film remake of the...
Like we didn't already have enough of those
I staring out the window yesterday, wondering what Meg Cabot has been up to. (Apart from finishing up her body-swapping Airhead series, which we're way behind on reviewing, even though her publis...
Highs and lows
Slate has set out to answer a question I've been wondering about myself: what's with all the recent articles proclaiming vampires some kind of "new craze"? Haven't they been a consistent craze? (T...
New clips from the upcoming 'Vampire Diaries' adaptation
I'm not sure what made me giggle more, the show's overall quality or that dude's eyebrows:But on the up side--the way, way up side--nobody appears to sparkle.
Midnight Secretary sequel in the works
AnimeNewsNetwork is reporting that Tomu Ohmi is planning a one-shot follow-up to her hugely popular Midnight Secretary* manga, which ended this month. This 36-page story, entitled "Midnight Butle...
Man, what a bummer.
GYAH! British actor Michael Sheen has signed on to play one of the Volturi vampires in the upcoming adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's New Moon. Do you guys realize how I feel about one of the stars ...
TV vampires strike again
GYAH! The CW has given the green light to a pilot of one of our favorite teen-girl vampire series from the mid-90s, L.J. Smith's slightly-hokey-but-still-delightful Vampire Diaries!Sadly, the pilo...