Vampire Junction

Rating:
Summary: This book was extremely amazing, deep, and dark.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, surreal, epic, one of my all-time favorites!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A book for both the sensationalist and the seer.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Must Be Considered a Disappointment
Review: Somtow's a fine writer, and there are things to admire here. I particularly liked the structure of the book: if vampires ever really existed, I suspect that they would experience life in much the same way that Somtow suggests. That being said, though, I found much of the Jungian psychology/philosophy (all of which underpins the book) belabored in the extreme, and most of the symbolism forced. Ultimately I feel that Vampire Junction is more an intellectual conceit than a real story.

The classic non-traditional vampire story remains Suzy McKee Charnas's Vampire Tapestry.

Rating:
Summary: pretentious, but with sparks of interest
Review: The analysis was dull and pretentious but his reminiscences were interesting. The other supporting characters, except for those closest to him Rudy, Maria and Carla, were at best annoyingly written.

Rating:
Summary: For strong-hearted horror readers only
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: near-great vampire novel
Review: This novel was better than 90% of the vampire stuff out there, though it doesn't quite reach "classic" status (Stoker's DRACULA, Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, Codrescu's BLOOD COUNTESS, Matheson's I AM LEGEND). I would put it in the near-great category, along with Nancy Collins' IN THE BLOOD. Though Somtow is a good writer and does an admirable job of weaving a complex story, by the end, it all seems a bit hollow at the center. It doesn't help that the novel ends in a predictably bloody fashion. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that the vampire is stuck in the body of a 12-year-old boy and therefore, despite assertions to the contrary, cannot see things from an adult perspective and make full sense out of his 2000 years of experience. Worth reading, but not a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: near-great vampire novel
Review: This novel was better than 90% of the vampire stuff out there, though it doesn't quite reach "classic" status (Stoker's DRACULA, Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, Codrescu's BLOOD COUNTESS, Matheson's I AM LEGEND). I would put it in the near-great category, along with Nancy Collins' IN THE BLOOD. Though Somtow is a good writer and does an admirable job of weaving a complex story, by the end, it all seems a bit hollow at the center. It doesn't help that the novel ends in a predictably bloody fashion. Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that the vampire is stuck in the body of a 12-year-old boy and therefore, despite assertions to the contrary, cannot see things from an adult perspective and make full sense out of his 2000 years of experience. Worth reading, but not a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: This book was extremely amazing, deep, and dark.
Review: 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.