Monday, August 31, 2009

Book Review 5: Suck it Up by Brian Meehl

I knew this was about vampires, and while I'm really into that since Buffy, Twilight, and True Blood now, I'm very skeptical of all the other vampire books there are. I especially am not a big fan of all the "special schools" for vampires. I liked how Buffy and Twilight and True Blood all have vampires out with normal, the first two keeping vampires in secret. Suck it Up is kind of similar to True Blood, in that most of the vampires are called "Leagers". They don't drink human blood, only animal blood, and they want to come out and live among "Lifers" or humans. The main character, Morning, was an orphan until a vampire killed his foster parents and turned him. He was found shortly after and taken to the school where he learned to be a Leager. He's never drunk human blood, not even animal blood, until this story, he'd only had a soy substitute. As his class graduates, one of the teachers, Mr. Birnam asks him to do a special favor, and be "the" first vampire to come out to the public. Birnam hires a PR woman, Penny, and Morning goes and lives with her and her daughter Portia. We learn about Morning's past, and some people in it who have more to do with the whole story than we knew at first. Morning's coming out is of course fraught with mistakes and craziness, and turns out there is another group of vampires, called loners, who don't want to change their ways of drinking human blood. And one of them, is really against Morning doing this, and so decides he will kill, him. But due to some of the original vampire laws, he is unable to do it himself, and so must hire someone else.

Good book, not as good as the others I've read, but still a good read. I can see that they left it open for a sequel, but I think it ended just fine. Of course there is a bit of flirtation between Portia and Morning, the problem being that Morning is stuck as a gawky 16 year old forever, and she is human.