shmoo1's Full Review: Christopher Moore - Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love St...
Jody Stroud is just starting the weirdest first day of the rest of her life. The previous night, she had been on her way home from work when a stranger leapt out from the shadows and attacked her, tearing at her clothes, forcing her to drink his blood and then stuffing her shirt with a hundred thousand dollars before leaving her for dead in an alley. Probably in itself not a wholly unique experience in San Francisco, but now Jody can hear fog brushing against the building next to her and smell cigarette butts buried deep in a distant garbage pail. She's pretty sure that her right arm, which is burnt crisp like a blackened catfish, should hurt a lot more than it does. It certainly doesn't smell good. ... and how exactly did she drag that dumpster on top of herself? When the automated emergency service's line (“If you've been shot, please press one. Stabbed, press two...”) confounds and frustrates her, she tears the phone apart, goes back to her apartment and breaks up with her boyfriend who thinks she was out all night because she lacks emotional commitment. Soon her razor sharp senses, deep reservoir of strength and lust for human blood make her realize that she has been turned in to a child of the night. She is now a vampire. Despite certain perks, like fabulous, luxurious hair and flawless skin, this puts a certain damper on her life. She will need a minion, a brainless, boot-licking slave that can walk both worlds of light and dark and put her affairs in order while she partakes in the sleep of the dead. Enter C. Thomas (Tommy) Flood. At nineteen, he is seven years Jody's junior and will do just about anything to see her naked. The role of boot-licking slave could be described as one of his less attainable sexual fantasies. The fact that Jody is cursed and could, at any moment, drain him of all bodily fluids does little to deter his hormones, in fact it's probably safe to say these facts propel them. Tommy Flood sees himself as the next great American author and has traveled all the way from Incontinence Indiana to experience life, to be taken seriously and starve for his art. Having been brought up properly, Tommy knows that despite the need to starve he still needs to be disciplined and enterprising, so he spends his nights as the manager of the local Safeway where he endears himself to his immature, miss-fit underlings (referred to as The Animals) with his exceptional level-headedness and his Turkey Bowling skills.
Throw in The Emperor Of San Francisco (a revered and admired homeless character based on 19th century eccentric Joshua Norton), the soldiers in his dog army, Bummer and Lazarus, the ancient vampire Elijah Ben Sapir who starts leaving dead bodies around to see how Jody and Tommy will cope, and “Good Cop” Detective Alphonse Rivera with his lumbering, intimidating, homosexual partner “Bad Cop” Nick Cavuto and you have the full cast of characters for Christopher Moore's romantic/supernatural/horror/comedy Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story.
Jody learns how to cope with being undead, mercifully feeding on the fatally infected and incurable, Tommy conducts numerous experiments on her (with out her permission) to separate fantasy from fact, falling in lust and then love with her, The Emperor tries to warn all who will listen that Nosferatu stalk the night and rallies The Animals to join him, Elijah Ben Sapir tests Jodie from the sidelines throwing corpses in her wake, and Cavuto and Rivera try to figure out where the hell all the bodies are coming from and how this goofy, hapless chump Flood is involved.
What a great ride.
Bloodsucking Fiends is Moore's third book and the one where he truly finds his stride; the voice and pace that will propel all of his following work. The experimenting that he has done with Practical Demonkeeping and Coyote Blue, the way he has been playing with odd characterization and his story telling style all come together with this piece. From here, Moore makes the leap from a decent goofy author with some quirky ideas to potentially a comedic writing icon definitely comparable to Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.
His dialog flows smoother than it has before and every character is fully fleshed out and worth investing yourself in. The numerous, quality characters he creates for this book will make you think of any classic, star studded movie that has you yearning for more screen time from each cast member. Even The Animals, who could have easily been glossed over, are presented so thoroughly that you want to know more about each one of them once they've stop smoking weed and wake boarding in soap suds through the Safeway's aisles. You find yourself hoping that Moore will pick up the threads of these people's lives somewhere else and thankfully he decided to.
As with every Moore book, certain moments stand out. Here, it is Tommy's obsessive experimentation on Jody and her reaction to it. He tries to get her to levitate and turn in to a wolf. He rubs her nude, sleeping body with garlic and crucifixes which does nothing to quell his growing erotic feelings for her. He stops short of driving a stake through her heart (K-Mart had a sale on mallets) when she threatens to see how long it takes him to forget what sex feels like. When he finally does talk her in to co-operating, she sinks deep in to a bathtub filled with ice water and breathes calmly for ten minutes, fully drowning herself. It's sort of pleasant.
My recommendation? Buy it. Read it. Read it again. Laugh out loud. If you enjoy a good story, if you like being amused, if you like vivid characters and a great premise, you will not be disappointed. If you are, write me and let me know and I'll personally apologize to you for wasting your time. If there is anything that is wrong with this book it's that, at three hundred pages, it's too short. Moore corrected this by writing a sequel.
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