Customer Reviews

Vampire Junction

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

One of the most wonderful reading experiences I've ever had. Vampire Junction is both nostalgic, cruel, deep, moving, insane, and pulp fiction. Vampire Junction breaks all the rules, and is completely stylistically inconsistent veering from passages of great passion and depth to passages of the most delicious and ridiculous adventure fiction, on the same page and sometimes within on the same sentence! One never knows what to expect. That's what's so cool about it! / Vampire Junction is about a lot of things! The main character is a beautiful androgynous 2000 year old vampire boy of seemly 11 years old, who has for almost as long as he can remember been a vortex for the worlds darkest fantasys. He is a wildly rich and intensely successful teen idol rock and roll superstar. He is coming to terms with the fact that he has compassion. He has always believed himself, a formulation of everyone else's illusions, basically. The world is a vampire, and he is a vampire, as he is a reflection of the world. But this new this sense of compassion, completely sends him for a loop, because it means he has something the world isn't feeding him. It means he may be more then the illusions of others./ I will not mention the rich and evilly decadent vampire hunters, the adventures with primal magic tribes in the heart of Africa, the insane pyromaniac classical music conductor who must set afire and destroy everything he loves; nor Timmy's brilliant Jungian therapist, the vampire lady of the night, the doomed young runaway girl, the Seeker; the terrified children of junction, the blood, the horror, the terror, the violence, the excitement, the sex and the brillentine beauty, and Bluebeard-- the original Bluebeard, except in this passing sentence. All whom effect Timmy Valentine is effected by in this crucial stage of his junction and are certainly affected by him./ The ending could not be what you expect. Don't even bother TRYING to guess it!/ The one thing I don't like about this book, and it makes me feel infinitely sad, is that I can't ever read it again for the first time! All first time readers in for a treat (to be rather subdue and colloquial about it! ) I found it to be both a feast for the sensationalist and the seer. It touches all bases and satisfies every aspect of the reader.

Somtow has a passionate approach to writing and a style that challenges you to pay attention. The writing is so vivid, so intense that I was completely caught up in it, and loved seeing new takes on Vlad the Impaler, Bram Stoker, etc. Everyone needs to visit the world of Timmy Valentine!

This novel was voted one of the 40 all-time greatest horror books, along with "Dracula", "Frankenstein", and all the classics ... and it's easy to see why. "Dracula" was a novel which, a century ago, skirted the very edge of sexual taboo ... now that the boundary line has moved, here is a novel which goes right up to the edge of today's sexual taboos in the sexless yet luridly erotic character of Timmy Valentine, a 2000-year old vampire who looks like a 12-year-old rock star. This is considered the first "splatterpunk" novel by many critics. It is the first novel to mix vampires and rock music (Anne Rice's version came out a year later). It holds up very well after 21 years.

This book pretty interesting. Some parts were hard to understand at times, but mainly it flowed smoothly. This book tells of an old vampire who yearns to be alive again, not be be only alive in the fears of humans.He wants to figure out what is wrong with him, so he goes to a psychiatrist, whom he brings into his web of unknown secrets. While all this is happening, a group of destruction-lovers are plotting to get the vampire. All kinds of things happen, a town is taken over, a crowd gets a taste of the powers of vampires, and so much more. It is a good book. So much happens in this book that it is impossible to know unless you read Vampire Junction.

How I love this book! Resplendent with violent and sensual imagery, Timmy's story unfolds with a subtle and beautiful energy that often explodes into overpowering scenes of bizarre and telling wonder. With magisterial grace and ease Somtow creates as varied and interesting a cast as I've ever come across and tours them through one grand and disturbing scene after another. He sails into the distant path to reveal the beauty and awe of classic myth and for surreal horror probes a number of contemporary madhouses with manic glee and talent to burn. Somtow shines images onto the mind's eye like no other writer, here displaying them atop a convoluted storyline that joyously threatens to many times careen out of control before coming together in an absolutely unpredictable and bizarre finale. Rock concerts, pyromania, insatiable bloodlust, immortals, cinema-addiction, PIRATES! Believe me, this book contains worlds within wild worlds. And yes, you will find yourself madly conducting classical music when the odyssey is complete.

This was the first book I ever threw in the bin. In fact, possibly the only one! I don't like throwing books away! Especially ones given to me.

But this book left me feeling sullied and disturbed. No doubt that is partly the author's intention - it is, after all, a horror story. But this was one of the first "splatterpunk" novels, filled with gratuitous violence and far too much sex and deviancy. All this is mixed in with a kind of musical snobbery - the author's other trade - which clearly seeks to lift the novel out of the gutter into something more literary, but in fact it just grates horribly.

There is also pop psychology. In fact the whole premise of the story revolves around some rather dubious pop psychology - and again that grates.

This is not a book I am proud to have read. One to studiously avoid.

(And yes, I know I will get some thumbs down for saying that - but if you do, I would appreciate a comment to explain why I am wrong!)

The book came in just a few days, plenty early for Christmas. And it was just as you described. Thank you so much!

This book has a horror that is really hard to digest. I recommend that readers who want to read this book have to brave the spurting deep dark features of devastation in this book. But it's also an entertaining novel. Horror fans will love it.

For anyone who loves blood and deep violence.
Also read John Skipp and Craig spector.

Timmy life got to me. Everything that he went through I was able to imagine to the fulless. The darkness of the book is what appealed to me the most. These elements of his dark past are nerve racking. If you can take the grism that Somtow presents this book is not for you.