Lest anyone think all I read is historical.
Christopher Moore first pulled me in with Island of the Sequined Love Nun and The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, but he really won me over with Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend. I’ve read a number of his other books (he was one of my dad’s favorites, and so whatever was his latest was always waiting in Chico when I visited).
I hadn’t read anything new in awhile, but saw these at the library and borrowed them, not even realizing they were actually sequels to Bloodsucking Fiends. The central story is pretty good–an 800-year-old vampire named Elijah visits modern-day San Francisco, decides he’s lonely/bored, and turns a 26-year-old Jody into a vampire to keep him company, only to have her go all independent and find a “boyfriend” (who she also feeds off of) who, along with his usually-stoned Safeway coworkers blow up Elijah’s yacht and steal his art collection. Jody decides she’s lonely, and turns her boyfriend Tommy after he releases her from the bronze statue he’s had her enclosed in. As they try to figure out how to live as a vampire couple, Tommy finds his own minion–“Abigail Von Normal, Emergency Backup Mistress of the Greater Bay Area Night.” She’s a 16-year-old goth with a crush on Tommy/”The Vampyre Flood,” and as she helps the couple rent a new apartment, feed Chet the shaved giant cat, and fight off the vengeful Elijah, she keeps a journal, the entries of which quickly become the most indispensable (since she’s awake in the daytime and the vampires aren’t) and entertaining parts of the book. She may be my favorite Moore character, though take that with a grain of salt, since it’s been a few years since I read any of his other books.
Abby insists on referring to Tommy Flood as “nosferatu,” and just so this isn’t a completely unlearned post, you can read about just what that is (at least according to Wikipedia–sorry, but a cursory online search didn’t turn up any obvious alternatives in the 11 minutes in which I wrote this post)–it’s fairly interesting.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming (i.e. 17th-century Indian baptisms).
