Is there any downside to being a vampire in this verse?

It makes you rilly emo.

(This is the same sort of thing that drove me insane with Time Traveler's Wife-- that and the horrible authorial intrusion.)

Barb, can you explain this wrt Time Traveler's Wife ? I know you didn't like it the way I did, but I'm not sure what you mean here.

Same here. I loved that book to pieces, and part of the reason was because Niffenegger was so internally consistent.

Is there any downside to being a vampire in this verse?

Well, he still can't go out in daylight because he's just too pretty or something.

Getting vamped makes you more of a Mary Sue than you already were.

Well, he still can't go out in daylight because he's just too pretty or something.

Oh my! I bet I would have LOVED this is 14, though

Oh my! I bet I would have LOVED this is 14, though

That's why I am reading the first one. Because it makes me giggle endlessly and I can see that my junior high self would have thought it was the best thing ever.

I'm trying to remember what I was reading at 14. That would have been eighth or ninth grade? I read The Mists of Avalon the summer before eighth grade, and then spent the next few years reading anything Arthurian I could get my hands on. Plus Jude Devereaux, Quantum Leap novels, Mary Higgins Clark, and Stephen King. So yeah, I probably would have loved the sparkly vampires.

At 14, I was reading a lot of Harlequin romances, checking out various nonfiction from the library (mostly history), and Stephen King. A year later is when I got into SF/fantasy (Tolkien, Heinlein, Clarke, etc.).

Skulduggery Pleasant, on the other hand, is delightful. I am loving 12-year-old Stephanie, with her guts and joie de vivre (...which I can't spell). And Skulduggery himself is cracking. So far Tanith has had only one chapter, but I was entirely enamoured of her. I do hope that she isn't evil/doesn't get killed off in an untimely fashion.

Oh my god, I *love* Tanith! "Come and have a go....if you think you're hard enough." Eeeeeeee!!!!

And Skulduggery himself cracks my shit up. He's totally Remington Steele. If, you know, Remington Steele was a skeleton. And of course I love Stephanie -- how could I *not* love a character who's THAT kickass AND shares my name?

Fay, you know there's a second one, right?

I do feel a sort of car crash curiosity. Much like with LK Hamilton, actually.

The newest Anita Blake caught my eye the other day, and I just had to read the book flap -- it's something about Anita having to go home with Jason (to his parents' home, or some other extended-family thing). Of course his family doesn't know he's a were-whatever, and so Anita is his beard.

(Although how can she be his beard if she's actually fucking him?)

(I guess she's his Beard of Normality?)

Anyway, I rolled my eyes forever and then put the book back on the shelf.

At 14, I was finally coming out of my Piers Anthony & Anne MacCaffrey phase, majorly into Stephen King, reading The Autobiography of Malcom X and various other bios/autobios of civil rights leaders. Also, a lot of MAD Magazine.