Welcome to a feature we're going to post on Mondays called:
Read This F@!%ing Book!
This is a feature for us to push our favorite reads that just aren't getting enough attention!
We're also opening it up to anyone who would like to guest post. Do you have a book that you just LURVED but feel like it's not getting the play it deserves? Email us to let us know and we'd be THRILLED to have you post about it here! Especially if its something we haven't reviewed yet - that's even better (but not necessary)!
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Read This F@!%ing Book Post 41: The Generation V series by M.L. Brennan
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I've been thinking about vampires lately. There's a certain new book out that people are saying will revive the genre, making all the old tropes new again. I love traditional vampire stories - they were really my first literary love. But I get much more excited about a book that does something completely new, throwing out the old tropes entirely. M.L. Brennan's Generation V series features an unlikely leading man and a completely original take on the vampire mythos.
Holding Out for a Hero
Fortitude Scott is about as far from a typical Alpha male vampire hero as you can get. He doesn't have super strength or super speed or super anything-at-all, really. What he does have is an advanced degree from an Ivy League school in a mostly useless subject. (He's a lot the rest of us liberal arts majors still trying to decide what to be when we grow up.) He drives a beat up old car and works at dead end jobs, shunning his wealthy family's assistance as much as possible.
But coming from the first family of New England's supernaturals still garners him attention and he ends up needing a bodyguard. His mother hires Suzume, a kitsune and one of my favorite characters EVER, to protect him. True to his anything-but-badass nature Fort doesn't really have a problem hiding behind a woman, though they become more like partners as the series progresses. By the third book, Fort's starting to grow in to his hero status and earning respect in the supe community, but he's still a long way from the typical vampire leading man. (Except for the brooding part - he's definitely got that down.)
Bela Legosi's Dead
But where Brennan really breaks the vampire mold is with her totally unique mythos. (Although the older Brennan's vampires get, the more they resemble the vampire stereotype of fanged, light sensitive blood drinkers.) These vampires are born, not made. Fort is the youngest of three children and is experiencing something like vampire puberty, just starting to come in to his powers. The mechanism by which that happens is shocking, both in the way it's revealed and in the fact that it's unlike anything I've seen before. Fort learns how it works, "the vampire birds and bees," right along with the readers over the course of the series. I've been completely fascinated and a little bit horrified watching it all come together.
I continue to be impressed by the originality of Brennan's supernatural society as well. The vampires are at the top of the food chain, which is not really new, with Fort's mother acting as a supernatural Donna Corleone. But Brennan also puts her unique spin on shifters and witches, brings in some underutilized creatures like the kitsune, and does Fae like you've never seen them before. The more I learn about these creatures and their politics, the more I love this world.
Are you interested in starting this series? Did we persuade you to add it to your TBR mountain? Or have you read it and love it as much as I do? Let us know in the comments below!
Book four in the series, Dark Ascension, is out in August so there's just enough time to catch up on Generation V. (Also note that the series was originally called American Vampire, so you might see it listed either way.) Order the first three books in the series here.
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