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3.79 AVERAGE
3.79 AVERAGE
Ancient vampire wakes up in modern times to face sparkly vampires. An enjoyable read, the humor is good 99% of the time but occasionally falls flat. At times the book tiptoes up to being to cutesy but never really steps over.
(Review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.)
I’m a big fan of vampire stories in general, partly because vampires are so versatile. I like the old-school, scary, Dracula types and the sexy, modern tortured hero types and a lot of the stuff in between. I don’t love all individual examples of these, of course, but I like a very broad range of vampires. The idea of one of the former waking up in modern day and discovering things have moved toward the latter is pretty funny. Unfortunately, this book does seem to be trying to appeal only to those who like the scary monster types and think that pretty types deserve to die, rather than those who prefer the pretty types or those who like both.
I quite enjoyed this book at first. It feels like a bad ’80s movie, in a good way. It’s guilty pleasure reading, cotton candy literature. I laughed in quite a few places, and it was fun.
But then things started creeping up to hamper my enjoyment of the book. It’s funny, but not as funny as it thinks it is. The book started reminding me of a child who is mildly clever but thinks he’s oh so very clever. There’s a certain amount of annoying arrogance in the humor at times. For example, “Look how clueless this person is; they don’t know/do this thing that literally everyone in the world knows/does,” when the thing in question is by no means universal and the only way someone would think it is if that person lives in an echo chamber environment with absolutely no diversity of thought or behavior. This smugness did not taint all of the humor in the book, but it showed up often enough to be persistently irritating.
I really found myself liking and sympathizing with the antagonists much more than the protagonists (“good guys” and “bad guys” aren’t really appropriate terms for this story). Because why would I not be on the side of likable vampire actors and writers who make a beloved TV series rather than the side of horrible, murderous monsters? Which, considering this is a book about mocking the modern affection for good guy vampires, seems like a failure on the author’s part.
The ending was not satisfying at all. I think this is largely because I have been a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy shows, as Amanda is in the story, and I couldn’t imagine ever killing the stars of my favorite show or allowing them to be killed by my family/acquaintances. (Especially when the show was not yet finished.) That rang utterly untrue to me. That’s simply not how fans act (aside from psychopaths, but Amanda’s not a psychopath; her brother might be, though). And those people weren’t even very annoying, much less evil or otherwise deserving of death.
There’s an author’s note in the back which indicates that this book was inspired by hearing some women talk about Twilight, and it seems clear that Twilight is the primary book he means to lambaste here, with his portrayal of beautiful yet watered-down vampires. The problem with that is that he’s not really giving Twilight vampires the credit they’re due. In order to make fun of them, he has to portray such vampires as weaklings who can be killed by a stake through the heart (which is ridiculously fragile when compared with the older, more monstrous vampires in his story). The problem, of course, being that Twilight vampires are actually incredibly tough, strong, and hard to kill (a stake does nothing at all to them). Twilight vampires, rather than being instantly slaughtered as the pretty, modern vampires in this story are, would have put up a very good fight against the older, monster vampires and quite likely would have ended up the winners. And yes, I acknowledge that these were not literally Twilight vampires but the author’s own sort of interpretation of what the modern version of vampires have become in much of popular culture, but my point is that (as the author implies in his author’s note) that type of vampire is in large part inspired and typified by Twilight vampires, so if the author was going to try to make fun of them, he should have attempted to do so because of what they are rather than because of what he wanted them to be for easier mocking.
As I said, I enjoy various types of vampires, including the ugly monsters and the romantic heroes, so I don’t like it when huge swathes of vampire lore/fandom are insulted, especially when they’re insults built on straw men. In treating the romantic hero vampires with such disdain, I felt like the author was insulting the huge audience of readers who enjoy those types of characters, like all those arrogant, elitist jerks who sneer at modern vampire stories or stories about vampires trying to find redemption as not being about “real vampires”.
In short, as a lover of vampires of all kinds, this book insulted me.
Not overtly, not right away, but in the end that’s where it got. I actually still had a semi-favorable outlook on the story once I finished reading it, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized that no, I was too offended by that pervasive, elitist arrogance that permeates this story.
I would recommend this book only to people who 1) like the hideous monster vampires of old mythology—and only those types of vampires, 2) have a sense of humor about them, 3) think that all modern variations of vampires who are not hideous monsters deserve to die simply for being not hideous monster vampires, and 4) want some light, fun, guilty-pleasure reading. If you are that type of reader, you’ll probably enjoy this book.
I’m a big fan of vampire stories in general, partly because vampires are so versatile. I like the old-school, scary, Dracula types and the sexy, modern tortured hero types and a lot of the stuff in between. I don’t love all individual examples of these, of course, but I like a very broad range of vampires. The idea of one of the former waking up in modern day and discovering things have moved toward the latter is pretty funny. Unfortunately, this book does seem to be trying to appeal only to those who like the scary monster types and think that pretty types deserve to die, rather than those who prefer the pretty types or those who like both.
I quite enjoyed this book at first. It feels like a bad ’80s movie, in a good way. It’s guilty pleasure reading, cotton candy literature. I laughed in quite a few places, and it was fun.
But then things started creeping up to hamper my enjoyment of the book. It’s funny, but not as funny as it thinks it is. The book started reminding me of a child who is mildly clever but thinks he’s oh so very clever. There’s a certain amount of annoying arrogance in the humor at times. For example, “Look how clueless this person is; they don’t know/do this thing that literally everyone in the world knows/does,” when the thing in question is by no means universal and the only way someone would think it is if that person lives in an echo chamber environment with absolutely no diversity of thought or behavior. This smugness did not taint all of the humor in the book, but it showed up often enough to be persistently irritating.
I really found myself liking and sympathizing with the antagonists much more than the protagonists (“good guys” and “bad guys” aren’t really appropriate terms for this story). Because why would I not be on the side of likable vampire actors and writers who make a beloved TV series rather than the side of horrible, murderous monsters? Which, considering this is a book about mocking the modern affection for good guy vampires, seems like a failure on the author’s part.
The ending was not satisfying at all. I think this is largely because I have been a big fan of sci-fi/fantasy shows, as Amanda is in the story, and I couldn’t imagine ever killing the stars of my favorite show or allowing them to be killed by my family/acquaintances. (Especially when the show was not yet finished.) That rang utterly untrue to me. That’s simply not how fans act (aside from psychopaths, but Amanda’s not a psychopath; her brother might be, though). And those people weren’t even very annoying, much less evil or otherwise deserving of death.
There’s an author’s note in the back which indicates that this book was inspired by hearing some women talk about Twilight, and it seems clear that Twilight is the primary book he means to lambaste here, with his portrayal of beautiful yet watered-down vampires. The problem with that is that he’s not really giving Twilight vampires the credit they’re due. In order to make fun of them, he has to portray such vampires as weaklings who can be killed by a stake through the heart (which is ridiculously fragile when compared with the older, more monstrous vampires in his story). The problem, of course, being that Twilight vampires are actually incredibly tough, strong, and hard to kill (a stake does nothing at all to them). Twilight vampires, rather than being instantly slaughtered as the pretty, modern vampires in this story are, would have put up a very good fight against the older, monster vampires and quite likely would have ended up the winners. And yes, I acknowledge that these were not literally Twilight vampires but the author’s own sort of interpretation of what the modern version of vampires have become in much of popular culture, but my point is that (as the author implies in his author’s note) that type of vampire is in large part inspired and typified by Twilight vampires, so if the author was going to try to make fun of them, he should have attempted to do so because of what they are rather than because of what he wanted them to be for easier mocking.
As I said, I enjoy various types of vampires, including the ugly monsters and the romantic heroes, so I don’t like it when huge swathes of vampire lore/fandom are insulted, especially when they’re insults built on straw men. In treating the romantic hero vampires with such disdain, I felt like the author was insulting the huge audience of readers who enjoy those types of characters, like all those arrogant, elitist jerks who sneer at modern vampire stories or stories about vampires trying to find redemption as not being about “real vampires”.
In short, as a lover of vampires of all kinds, this book insulted me.
Not overtly, not right away, but in the end that’s where it got. I actually still had a semi-favorable outlook on the story once I finished reading it, but then I thought about it a bit more and realized that no, I was too offended by that pervasive, elitist arrogance that permeates this story.
I would recommend this book only to people who 1) like the hideous monster vampires of old mythology—and only those types of vampires, 2) have a sense of humor about them, 3) think that all modern variations of vampires who are not hideous monsters deserve to die simply for being not hideous monster vampires, and 4) want some light, fun, guilty-pleasure reading. If you are that type of reader, you’ll probably enjoy this book.
Looking for something fun, light and easy to read? Then look no further as An Unattractive Vampire does just that. I laughed out loud so many times while reading it. Yulric the Vampyr, just cracked me up. The reason I gave it four stars was simply because I wanted more pages!!
A friend recently asked for new vampire books, something different and unique. That reminded me of a book I had put on my “For Later” shelf at the library, so I bumped it up to check it out. It was the title, you see, that drew me. An Unattractive Vampire, are they even allowed?
It turned out that An Unattractive Vampire is intriguing and special in more than one way. It is published by Inkshares, the book publishers that crowdsource their selection process with some crowdfunding thrown in. The author, Jim McDoniel was standing in line behind some women discussing Twilight and was inspired to write the anti-Twilight. So, I have not read Twilight, I tried, but could not do it. I watched half of the first film. That this book was inspired by a bit of Twilight loathing made me anticipate some fun.
An Unattractive Vampire delivers on the fun. Jim McDoniel is a witty, amusing writer. He can also move things along. For example, if you have read any of the Nicholas Flamel series, it can take an entire book to meet and greet everyone who needs to gather to handle the bad guys. McDoniel can handle that gathering of the gang in one chapter. This is such a relief as there is nothing more boring that hail-fellow-well-met catch me up on the gossip sessions in chapter after chapter after chapter when all they are doing is getting a bunch of folks together to go bust heads.
Amanda, a sassy young woman who likes the sparkly vampires and wants to be one, discovers than an ancient vampire is buried in her basement. She digs him up, expecting glittery glamour, but instead Yulric Bile is, as the title says, unattractive. Very unattractive, in fact Amanda does not believe he is a vampire, or vampyr as he insists on calling it. A werewolf or a zombie, maybe, not a vampire.
Yulric has been asleep for 300 years so she sets him down in front a TV to catch up on progress. When she insists on watching her favorite show, a vampire soap opera, Yulric is fascinated, even obsessed. He must meet thing, but the meeting is disastrous as he discovers the modern vampires have been genetically engineered, and worse, they are not evil.
Well, this means war and that’s what we have, a sarcastic, caperish war between the old ways and modernity…and we are all firmly on the side of the ancients. Of course, it’s all incredibly violent in the kind of Richard Rodriguez violence-is-funny way. Particularly since the ancient vampires most definitely don’t want to kill the new vampires because then they won’t know how the soap opera turns out. So yes, it’s hilarious at times.
An Unattractive Vampire is a light book. a quick and easy read. There is a message to readers about our obsession with physical beauty, or its lack. There’s plenty of action and things keep chugging along, keeping me intrigued and turning the pages. There is one glaring weakness, though. It is unclear what motivates some of the characters. Why doesn’t Yulric just kill Amanda and Simon, for example. Why don’t they kill him? But if you quit asking why and just sit back for the ride, it will be a fun one.
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/an-unattractive-vampire/
It turned out that An Unattractive Vampire is intriguing and special in more than one way. It is published by Inkshares, the book publishers that crowdsource their selection process with some crowdfunding thrown in. The author, Jim McDoniel was standing in line behind some women discussing Twilight and was inspired to write the anti-Twilight. So, I have not read Twilight, I tried, but could not do it. I watched half of the first film. That this book was inspired by a bit of Twilight loathing made me anticipate some fun.
An Unattractive Vampire delivers on the fun. Jim McDoniel is a witty, amusing writer. He can also move things along. For example, if you have read any of the Nicholas Flamel series, it can take an entire book to meet and greet everyone who needs to gather to handle the bad guys. McDoniel can handle that gathering of the gang in one chapter. This is such a relief as there is nothing more boring that hail-fellow-well-met catch me up on the gossip sessions in chapter after chapter after chapter when all they are doing is getting a bunch of folks together to go bust heads.
Amanda, a sassy young woman who likes the sparkly vampires and wants to be one, discovers than an ancient vampire is buried in her basement. She digs him up, expecting glittery glamour, but instead Yulric Bile is, as the title says, unattractive. Very unattractive, in fact Amanda does not believe he is a vampire, or vampyr as he insists on calling it. A werewolf or a zombie, maybe, not a vampire.
Yulric has been asleep for 300 years so she sets him down in front a TV to catch up on progress. When she insists on watching her favorite show, a vampire soap opera, Yulric is fascinated, even obsessed. He must meet thing, but the meeting is disastrous as he discovers the modern vampires have been genetically engineered, and worse, they are not evil.
Well, this means war and that’s what we have, a sarcastic, caperish war between the old ways and modernity…and we are all firmly on the side of the ancients. Of course, it’s all incredibly violent in the kind of Richard Rodriguez violence-is-funny way. Particularly since the ancient vampires most definitely don’t want to kill the new vampires because then they won’t know how the soap opera turns out. So yes, it’s hilarious at times.
An Unattractive Vampire is a light book. a quick and easy read. There is a message to readers about our obsession with physical beauty, or its lack. There’s plenty of action and things keep chugging along, keeping me intrigued and turning the pages. There is one glaring weakness, though. It is unclear what motivates some of the characters. Why doesn’t Yulric just kill Amanda and Simon, for example. Why don’t they kill him? But if you quit asking why and just sit back for the ride, it will be a fun one.
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/07/28/an-unattractive-vampire/
Fun premise and a good response to the vampire trend of the last decade or so. The writing style is rather quirky, which I could see as a turn off for some readers. For example, at one point a character has to retrieve something out of the bottom of her purse during an action scene, and in to add in humor the author describes every single item she has to push aside in order to get what she was looking for. Sure, this is funny. But when you are listening to the audiobook while stuck in rush hour traffic, you'd perhaps rather the author not pause the action to regale you with a description of all the random crap that collects in a woman's purse. The book would probably be half as long without all the "humorous" asides.
Very funny. It took me kind of a long time to read it because the plot wasn’t really holding my attention, but overall a very fun read. Amazing cover, too.
Yulric Bile, undead and ugly. Also - very proud of that. When he is wakened in present-day, he is alarmed - and angered - first by being mistaken for every other monster EXCEPT a vampyre (as he spells it), then by becoming aware that he isn't considered a vampire because...he's TOO UGLY. In the day of glittery, beautiful vampires, Bile is an outcast...a problem he intends to fix.
I had read several recommendations for this book and was excited to read it myself. While I enjoyed it, I didn't really find it laugh-out-loud funny, or anything like that. To me, it was a light, amusing read that was reasonably quick and entertaining. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as you're not expecting more.
I did enjoy the majority of the characters, particularly the love/hate relationship between eight-year-old Simon and Bile himself. Evenly matched in wits, intelligence, and arrogance, they make the perfect partners. They really were the highlight of the story for me. The rest of the characters were interesting in their own ways, but didn't have the same vein of annoying amusement.
The story itself was unusual, and written with a bit of off-the-cuff smart-aleck humor that makes for a quick and enjoyable read. Overall, it wasn't exceptional, it wasn't terrible, it was just a fun, fast romp.
I had read several recommendations for this book and was excited to read it myself. While I enjoyed it, I didn't really find it laugh-out-loud funny, or anything like that. To me, it was a light, amusing read that was reasonably quick and entertaining. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as you're not expecting more.
I did enjoy the majority of the characters, particularly the love/hate relationship between eight-year-old Simon and Bile himself. Evenly matched in wits, intelligence, and arrogance, they make the perfect partners. They really were the highlight of the story for me. The rest of the characters were interesting in their own ways, but didn't have the same vein of annoying amusement.
The story itself was unusual, and written with a bit of off-the-cuff smart-aleck humor that makes for a quick and enjoyable read. Overall, it wasn't exceptional, it wasn't terrible, it was just a fun, fast romp.