a couple vampire books

The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason

When I first started reading this book I described it to a friend as Buffy in 19th-century London. That's not a completely accurate description, but I think it works well enough.

The Rest Falls Away is the first book in a series, the Gardella Vampire Chronicles. I like the concept, but I thought parts of The Rest Falls Away were slow (understandable in the first book of a series in which a good deal of groundwork needs to be laid for forthcoming books) and I'm really not crazy about how it ended (though I understand why Gleason had the book end that way).

It will be interesting to see how Gleason continues the storyline and how certain secondary characters figure into the story arch.


You Suck by Christopher Moore
- read by Susan Bennett

I'd never read Christopher Moore before (I wasn't sure if I'd be able to appreciate his humor), but when I saw an unabridged audio version of You Suck on the shelf during a book outlet closing, I couldn't help myself.

You Suck is definitely not my favorite vampire book by any stretch, but I didn't dislike it as much as I thought I would. Susan Bennett is a good reader and while I found some of her voices annoying, I know it was intentional as a number of the characters themselves are exceedingly whiny. I really liked some of Moore's zany tertiary characters (like the Emperor of San Francisco), but I found most of the other characters irritating and unsympathetic. Abby is an exception because, while she can be aggravating, her journal entries are extremely funny because she can sometimes be so clueless about what is actually happening around her.

The audio version did have an extra feature that I liked very much. The last few tracks on the last CD contain a short interview with Moore, in which someone from the publisher asks him questions about his work.