Vampires and Love Stories: How it SHOULD be done
Everyone knows about Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Most everyone is also highly opinionated about the series – positively or negatively. I read the first one and I think it’s not so bad, but it’s not really worth reading the rest (or really the first, even, but I needed to read it to know that). Let’s just say that if I wanted to mock and deride Twilight, I would be able to find more than enough material. Sparkly vampires. Enough said.
This disappointed me a bit, because if there is something I have a weakness for, it’s vampire love stories. Not erotic stuff like the Anita Blake books. More like the sub-plot with that romance novelist vampire I forget the name of in that Blood whatever series by Tanya Huff that I read the first 3-4 books of before getting annoyed by the werewolves (why is there always a werewolf book?!). And Twilight, well, it doesn’t really deliver. There’s no real emotional engagement, no character development, everything happens entirely too fast and too smoothly. There’s no conflict, no real damage to anyone, no real crisis between humanity and vampiricity, and they don’t even drink human blood. It’s just overall wimpy.
For the rest of you like me, then, I offer this lovely in-progress story/novel/what have you: Finding Eden. I feel a little bad presenting it in this context, as the author I believe is a bit resentful about Twilight coming out while she has been writing it and making everyone think it was related to it (the title was originally The Coming of Twilight, but I’m glad she changed it as Finding Eden is much more fitting for the story). I found it because the author is a friend of a friend, and while the story is effectively at manuscript level and could use some editing for grammar, spelling and whatnot, it is otherwise quite well-written.
And then there is the story itself. The characters have depth and background and character. There is no Mary Sue-ism, with characters having reasonable and varied levels of flaws. The vampires feed off of humans, and she handles the conflict between human nature and morality and the vampiric “inner demon” sort of thing very well. She usually publishes one new chapter each week, so it’s updated nice and regularly. And they aren’t measley little chapters either, as you’ll see if you go read it. Which I strongly recommend that you do.
Sounds like a very interesting story. I’m off tonight and tomorrow so I’ll definitely be checking it out. :D
P.S. your description of twilight as “wimpy” is perfect!
Ha! I will admit to having read all the Twilight books, but I am not a rabid fun. I think they’re fun, trashy reading, that’s all.
But your recc sounds interesting, I shall have to take a peek. It’s a while since I’ve poked around on fictionpress; I kind of stopped using it when I set up my own site instead.