With my husband out of town for the weekend and my mind/body just beginning to get a little rested after the annual spring marathon of work known as Capital Pride, all I really wanted to do with my free time for the last three days was read. It didn't really matter what, as long as I was reading something and, hopefully, knocking at least one partially read novel off the teetering piles on my nightstand and dresser.
Good news: mission accomplished. I am now officially on break from fantasy novels of all stripes, having just sped my way through The Talismans of Shannara, the fourth book of the second Shannara series -- as well as the 12th Shannara book I've read in twelve months. I'm nothing if not thorough. But I'm fantasied out. I will return to the genre when George R.R. Martin gets over his writer's block for the now two-years-overdue next installment of Song of Fire and Ice, but until then I need to focus on other things.
Normally, "other things" would not include vampires because my Anne Rice phase ended at the same time I stopped being a twink. Ancient times, those. Following her reinvention (and subsequent running-into-the-ground) of the sub-genre, vampire novels have become progressively sillier twists on Harlequin romance templates that hold zilch level of interest for me. So I was rather intrigued at the prospect of a Guillermo del Toro reinvention of the vampire -- discarding the romanticized and eroticized trappings that have stifled the iconic creature in place of something more modern and, possibly, terrifying.
The resulting novel, The Strain (co-authored with Chuck Hogan), is a bit like the supernatural offspring of two of del Toro's films: Mimic and Blade II. From the first you get the creepy and overtly stylized New York City underground, from the second you get the feral and ultraviolent bloodsuckers who threaten to take over the world. Toss in some 28 Days Later zombie tweaks and you have The Strain.
You'll notice that I'm comparing the novel exclusively to existing movies. That's because The Strain at times reads like a script treatment more than a novel, particularly in the first third or so, where the forensic epidemiology sputters and clunks along until the authors finally get the story into gear. Once moving, it's a quick and gripping (if somewhat shallow) read. The unfortunate part is that the book is inherently unfulfilling, given that it's the first book in a vampire trilogy, with the sequels slotted for 2010 and 2011. Here's hoping writer's block doesn't set in and screw with the schedule.
With those two out of the way, I decided it was time to delve into Dan Simmons's Drood, a creepy literary "history" of the final years of Charles Dickens's life -- a fictional story of the famous author's descent into possible madness after a near-death experience in a train crash and a meeting with a shadowy figure named Drood who may or may not be death. Or may or may not be real at all.
Given that I'm only about 100 pages into a nearly 800-page novel, I can't offer any finality of opinion yet, but the opening is a dazzling blend of humor (the narrator is a friend and rival of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, whose contempt for Dickens flares through the narrative in ways both hilarious and familiar to those of us who've ever experienced some serious professional envy) and deeply unsettling. Plus, as you may already know from other histories and novels (e.g. Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle), pre-sewage-system London was apparently hands-down the most disgustingly filthy and noxious place on the planet, like a slaughterhouse operating in Hell's own cesspit.
I hope to finish Drood relatively quickly, although Wimbledon did just start today so who knows what my reading schedule will be. More late nights, I suppose, which is appropriate enough -- Drood begs to be read in the dimmest of light.
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