Blood Sucking Fiends

Everyone seems to be on a vampire kick lately (no thanks to Twilight), so when I picked up Christopher Moore’s Blood Sucking Fiends and read the teaser, I knew I couldn’t resist such entertainment.

Jody is a stuck in a dead end job with a conceited jerk of a boyfriend. It all changes when she is “mugged”— dragged under a dumptster, given 70k in cash, and wakes up two days later—with a powerful thirst. Jody quickly realizes what she has become and befriends naive Tommy, the night manager of the local grocery. He can run her “daytime” errands and watch over her as she sleeps during the day. Their relationship quickly deepens and Tommy falls madly in love with Jody.

Unfortunately, Jody’s maker has decided to see if she is up to par and begins toying with her–leaving dead bodies that can be connected to both her and Tommy. As Jody struggles to outwit a being hundreds of years older, Tommy does his part to help her brush up on vampire abilities–quoting Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire constantly (“Lestat can do____”). His experiments include trying to “drown” Jody to see if she can breathe underwater (it turns out she doesn’t need to breathe at all) and getting her to “think like a bat” to see if she will turn into one. As Tommy realizes that Jody’s maker is a potential threat to their relationship, he teams up with his night shift buddies to eradicate him…but can he kill the man Jody wants so desperately to learn from?

Moore does an excellent job with his characters–Tommy’s night shift buddies and their ridiculous quirks are eerily believable, as is His Majesty Emperor Norton (Emperor of California and Protector of Mexico) and his two dogs.

Blood Sucking Fiends is fun, fast, and witty.  I thoroughly recommend it for those looking for “lighter” vampire fiction.