All over the world, since the darkest ages of mankind, there have been legends of beautiful life-sucking creatures, known to us as vampires. The first notable book about vampires is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As most of us know, Dracula is the story of an evil, blood thirsty vampire with no redeemable traits. Vampire stories continued in this fasion until Anne Rice showed up on the scene. Starting with Interview with the Vampire, she portrayed vampires as beautiful and humanlike. For the first time in literary history, vampires had a conscious; they loved, they despaired, they felt. Mrs. Rice opened the floodgates to the new era of vampires. Then came Stephanie Meyer, author of the Twilight series. With Twilight, vampires became teenaged heartthrobs, and authors everywhere took notice.
In the books reviewed, the vampire in question is not Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, or even Twilight; the series in question is Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schreiber. In this tale, a goth girl named Raven meets the goth vampire boy of her dreams and they have many adventures and misadventures together. I picked up this series because it was recommended to me by several people. Now, I don’t mean to be harsh, but Vampire Kisses seems to be an adolescent fantasy thought up by someone who knew next to nothing about vampires and even less about Goths.
Raven, the heroine, is almost unbearably perky, ending the majority of her sentences with exclamation marks. She is a ‘goth’ in all of her memories, even back to elementary school. In this series, ‘goth’ means “too much makeup wearing, death obsessed, clothing fixated teen.” It’s a travesty and every fan-fiction reader’s worst nightmare. The characters are flat, immature and fit together illogically.
There are some redeeming literary traits. The sensory language is very good and the humor is clever and fresh. Right now, there are probably several fans of this series out for my blood (haha). I’ll admit I’m very critical. If you Vampire Kisses fans enjoy the series, by all means read on! Maybe theseries impoves as it evolves. I’ve only read books 1-3, and I plan on finishing the series. I have every hope that the story will improve with time.
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