Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Some of the people sniping at Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series as being equivalent to Harry Potter for angsty teenyboppers except not particularly well-written made me stop and go: “Wait, Harry Potter was well-written?” (This is clearly because I am such a superior reader with superior tastes in all my literature, and anyone who thinks Harry Potter is awesome is wrong. And stupid. And racist. And a killer of puppies. Just so we’re clear about where I come from when I make statements of aesthetic judgment.) My pointless and incredibly silly snobbery when it comes to children’s and YA fiction aside, what struck me about some of the comments in Pharyngula that dealt with Twilight was the offhand dismissal of the series, not merely because they weren’t especially well-written (I myself couldn’t finish Twilight, and in that regard I’m totally in agreement that it’s the Harry Potter of vampire teenyboppers), but because they were obviously written for a teenage female audience in mind. There’s much casual contempt for literature that deals with the emotional and the female, and I see it as a logical extension from a culture that devalues female experiences in general; that teenage female romantic experiences in particular are singled out as being especially frivolous and assumed to be Not Worthy of Serious Thought isn’t anything new, but it still chafes at me when I see it pop up.

I am also fascinated--FASCINATED--that Harlequin has become shorthand for romance, all romance, the way it has, since books published under the Harlequin/Silhouette imprint cover only a very specific niche of romance. It’d be as if, in attempting to define ice-cream, somebody didn’t address the ingredients, or the characteristics that make ice-cream, well, icy and creamy, but instead chose to refer to it solely by a rather slapdash association of flavor and brand name, sometimes resulting in rather jarring juxtapositions if you know ice-cream well. “My mom’s a huge fan of Breyer’s Phish Food, but I just don’t get it--the thought of eating bits of unbaked chocolate chip cookie dough in ice-cream makes me want to hurl,” sez somebody, and it’s all I can do to not leap up like an obnoxious bastard and say “DUDE, Phish Food is Ben and Jerry’s, and for the love of God, it doesn’t have chocolate chip cookie dough anywhere in it, and really, YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T EAT ICE-CREAM AND THEREFORE ARE UNQUALIFIED TO COMMENT ON WHAT WE’RE EATING, AND I’M GOING TO JUMP ON YOUR HEAD BECAUSE YOUR NEXT COMMENT IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE HOW EVERYONE WHO EATS ICE-CREAM IS A FAT WHORE. SEE HOW I’M JUMPING ON YOUR HEAD? JUMP. JUMMMMMP.”

Right. Now that I’m thoroughly craving Phish Food (AND have successfully squelched my desire to act like an obnoxious bastard on somebody else’s comment board--at least this time): PZ’s question at the end intrigues me. Where DID this surge come from?Because people attributing the surge to Twilight are wrong. Twilight hit just as vampires and paranormal romance were huge and getting even bigger. JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood had hit the scene like a hundred-khilitohn bhomb the September previous to Twilight‘s publication. I’m not necessarily interested in tracing the whole trajectory to its source, because I think the current paranormal romance scene is not a direct reaction to, say, the disturbing eroticism of Dracula--I think Anne Rice’s novels are a better candidate for that.

Personally, I think the current paranormal romance boom is the direct descendant of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, which is more urban fantasy than a creature driven by older, more Victorian mythologies and sensibilities.

Regardless of what the Anita Blake series has become, and regardless what people may think, the popularity of the books and its unholy progeny is due to more than the thrill of reading taboo-busting inter-species nookie; somebody in the comments quoted a Powell’s Books employee defining the genre as “women committing every imaginable act of lust and perversion with vampires, werewolves, demons, Lovecraftian tentacled rape gods, basically anything you can imagine as long as it’s not a normal human man"--which made me go HAAAA, but also made me go “Oh, come ON, judging all of paranormal romance just because you were forced to page through the Merry Gentry series is hardly fair. I mean, taboo-busting inter-species nookie is pretty hot and definitely a factor in the popularity--and really, God bless our prurient motivations, because so much brilliant art would have gone (and continue to go) unexpressed if it weren’t for horny artists sublimating their unspeakable urges in beautiful ways, and I really don’t see any inherent wrongness in reading something to get your rocks off (but oh God that’s another topic for another time). But slapping the “It’s the Sex, Stupid” label on the phenomenon is too simple, and falls into the old “Psh, it’s porn, that’s why they like it” dismissal that covers everything and explains very little.

My theory is: it’s also about women, and putting women in control, and how we’re still not comfortable enough to put it in real-life/realistic fiction terms yet.

The surge of demand for women in a dominant role--as pursuers and protectors and warriors--has been a long time coming, and I think it says something interesting about us and our level of comfort with and/or inability to suspend disbelief about women owning a certain sort of cultural power that most of the asskicking happens in Not Quite Earth, and that many of the heroines are Not Quite Human. The current crop of paranormal romances owe a lot to Anita Blake, but they owe much to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, too.

And now I’ve pretty much reached the extent of my over-thinking about this particular bit of romance, it’s your turn: feel free to overthink paranormal romances in the comments. Or, you know, don’t. Do you read it mostly--even solely--for the hot sex and because you have a hard-on for angsty immortals? Sing it loud, and sing it proud.

The subject of Cole’s titles came up in a discussion with a few nefarious bloggers, and I pointed out that I can’t tell them apart if you pay me. In fact, even making that list right there meant one tab had the Cole backlist in order, one tab had the ISBN lookup, and one page had cover illustrations to try to nudge my memory.

And you know, now that I think about it, the covers don’t help me that much either. If you list them by cover art, it’s

Mr. Chest
Vampire with Blonde Chick
Red Background with Pleather Girl
Snape Gazes at Redhead’s Jugular
Nathan Kamp
Nathan Kamp

Mr. Kamp, this is not helping.

Jane from DearAuthor suggested retitling them as if they were Harlequin Presents Novels:

1 - The Billionaire General’s Marriage Revenge
2 - The Lykae’s Virgin Mistress
3 - The Russian Tycoon’s Reluctant Bride
4 - Bedded at the Beastlord’s Convenience
5 - Under the Vampire Lover’s Command
6 - The Rich Mercenary’s Secret Baby Plan

Not bad. She also suggested a more simple list that cracked me up like damn and whoa:

1 - Mysty the Vampire Slayer
2 - The Lykae’s Secret Virgin Mistress
3 - The Amazing Hie
4 - The Witch and the Beastlord
5 - The Ghost and Mr. Madman
6 - Lick My Horns

I’m more literal in my memory needs, however, so I’ve been playing with a few styles of Renaming Kresley Cole’s Books. The best names are the ones I’m trying desperately to memorize alongside the more interchangeable actual titles. It’s “Friends” style subtitling, and is utterly unimaginative.

The one with in the anthology.
The one with the Vampire and the Valkyrie
The one with the Hie
The one with the Lykae and the Super Witch
The one with the Hot ghost and the Crazy ass
The one with the Slacker Demon and the Prissy Mathematician

No marketing department is going for that, right? So here’s my last group. I think this set really rocks:

Myst Mountin’ on Top
The Vampire and His Little Lady
The Hie, The Cold, and the Warlord
Monkey Sex on a Dusty Tree
Wicked Pee on an Electric Fence
Demon Desires Swamp Girl

Come on! That’s sales gold, right there, is what that is.

In case, like me, you’ve been under a rock for awhile (how’s your rock? Mine’s awesome!) and haven’t read or heard of this series, here’s the nutshell: klutzy teen Bella Swan moves to exceptionally small gloomy town in the Pacific Northwest to live with her father, who is so absent he might as well not be a parent so much as a chaperone who falls asleep or, in this case, goes fishing a lot. Gloomy, Abercrombie-gorgeous Hottie McVampire Edward is playing at being a high school student with his adopted family, and seems profoundly disturbed by her presence, only to experience equally profound mood swings which allow him to pay extreme attention to her. Commence panting courtship.

I do get the elements that are so sultry and seductive about the plotline: he’s over the moon about her; he can’t stop thinking about her. He’s mysterious, he’s dark and gloomy, he’s like angst and sexy rolled up in a sparkly taco shell. He’s isolated and longing for her, yadda yadda yadda. And I can see why some readers adore the plotline where she reveals him and gains solo entrance into his world, is the only one to make him smile, etc.

But what I don’t get is the degree of isolation that accompanies that entrance. I can’t even explain how uncomfortable their self-imposed alienation makes me feel. The former angsty teenager in my shriveled, echoing heart is all over it, because dude. Hot angst biscuit wants her and only her and after six weeks let’s make declarations of loooooove. He’ll watch over her while she sleeps, he’ll sneak into her home, he’ll insert himself silently into every part of her world. Former Angsty Sarah can see why that’s incredibly seductive, especially when one is feeling lonely and without anyone who truly understands.

Currently Adult Sarah, who is a lot older and one would hope marginally wiser than F.A.S. is majorly squicked out. The imbalance of power between these two characters is significant, and his moodswings don’t help much. He’s annoyed, he’s irritated, he’s blissful! He’s sparkly, he’s angry, he’s irritated again. But what really bothers me is the degree to which Bella subsumes her identity at every turn. She inserts herself into her father’s home by doing the things that will make him happy (cooking, laundry, making herself scarce when he wants to go fishing and is troubled by feelings of potential parental responsibility) with minimal fuss. She inserts herself into Edward’s world by doing the same - the biggest show of spine she has (so far, I’m on page 3,546,775 of 7,532,668) is asking a shit ton of questions, but mostly only with his permission to do so. She’s a mismatched dichotomy of the teen no one notices and the teen everyone notices and it doesn’t fit well on her, nor does it make for an interesting character. Even her name as a reference to her character is klunky: Bella Swan? COME ON NOW AND I MEANT IT.

Meyer’s writing is nothing to hyperventilate over, in my opinion, except for its tendency to hyperventilate in moments of drama. That said, I don’t necessarily see the point in condemning a book and saying no one should read it, it’s awful, omg, alert the vampires that a terrible insult has been laid upon them. Meyer definitely taps into the dark, mysterious tortured hero, one of my personal favorite archetypes, but the degree to which Edward’s intensity is focused on Bella, and the degree to which he shifts in mood and action (he’s here! He’s gone! He’s back! Whee! Do vampires get frequent flyer miles because damn, he gets elite status in, like, a week.) doesn’t seem to level out. And while Edward is a 9.0 on the Richter scale in terms of mood variations, Bella mopes from meh to meh. I’m curious about the movie, simply because the actress playing her is exceptionally talented, and could revive the character to a more vibrant portrayal. The book’s version of Bella and Edward reads to me like pairing lukewarm milk with a Red Savina pepper.

My wishlist for this book is a mile long in terms of things I wished had been a little different, a little better, a little more sparkly, if you’ll pardon the pun, but mostly I wish I could understand what it is about the book that sends so many people over the moon in terms of their adoration and pursuit of more. Either way, if this book makes people sunny and moony at the same time, more happiness to them. Whatever floats your boat. Or sparkles your vampire.