You Suck: A Love Story | Christopher Moore

You Suck: A Love Story | Christopher Moore | Undead need a good laugh, too

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You Suck: A Love S...

	You Suck: A Love Story Christopher Moore Harper Paperbacks, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 132 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Being undead sucks. Literally.

Just ask C. Thomas Flood. Waking up after a fantastic night unlike anything he's ever experienced, he discovers that his girlfriend, Jody, is a vampire. And surprise! Now he's one, too. For some couples, the whole biting-and-blood thing would have been a deal breaker. But Tommy and Jody are in love, and they vow to work through their issues.

But word has it that the vampire who initially nibbled on Jody wasn't supposed to be recruiting. Even worse, Tommy's erstwhile turkey-bowling pals are out to get him, at the urging of a blue-dyed Las Vegas call girl named (duh) Blue.

And that really sucks.

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Nosferattitude

You Suck is the sequel to The Author Guy's foray into humorous, bizarro vamp-lit, and it's just as zany and enjoyable as its predecessor, Bloodsucking Fiends. I won't go too much into the story except to say that C. Thomas Flood is now forced to accept his newly acquired pale force, a first reaction being to promptly apply liberal amounts of both orange-hued tanning lotion and intense monkey love with his partner in blood, Jody Stroud. Add to that goth-chick and minion extraordinaire Abby Normal, a blue entrepreneur of the night, vamps obsessed with tracksuits, and a huge shaved cat named Chet. That's it, go read the thing for yourself.

I will say though, that Moore has a definite knack for the unexpected in his tales. He simply can't be categorized an author of the funny, since any characters are fair game for an imaginative and grizzly maim or demise. That being said, his ability to absorb the ever-changing and complex vernacular of today's disaffected youth is really an experience to savor, a prime example being his excerpts from the diary of Abby Normal. I can't think of any better description than...gonzo.

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Undead need a good laugh, too

Despite the foolhardiness of giving a book such an obvious target name, Christopher Moore's on his game with this one, a sequel to the whacked-out 1995 undead romance Bloodsucking Fiends. The story picks up immediately after the first one left off: Tommy Flood, an aspiring writer from Indiana who leads the night crew at a San Francisco Safeway, has fallen in love with Jody Stroud, a newly minted member of the pale community. The first book was all about their romance, but this time around, Jody has decided to fully commit to their relationship. To that end, she puts the fanged mojo on Tommy, who wasn't expecting to wake up dead.

This doesn't sit well with the two homicide cops who investigated some of Jody's misdeeds in the first book, nor does it go over well with the Animals (Tommy's former crew), who got a taste for vampire hunting when they helped Jody and Tommy take out Jody's sire. Throw in a blue-painted Vegas hooker who sees eternity in her future, a teenaged minion who's too Goth for anybody and Jody and Tommy's ongoing research into what vampires can actually do ... and set it in San Francisco, one of the few cities where a coven of vampires could fit in without causing a scene. Mix well and serve; hilarity ensues.

One of the joys of Moore's novels is that he doesn't wink at the audience in his work. He sets up WTF situations and has the characters play them utterly straight; just because it's weird, you can almost hear Moore think, doesn't mean it's not their lives. This approach allows the humor and character interaction to happen organically in the story, and not be slapped on because the author thought it was a good joke. Yes, the things that happen are outrageous, but the characters themselves are not: they are regular people in irregular situations, flawed but likable heroes who try to get through their lives despite being vampires or reapers or Christ's best friend (these are all from Moore's books, for the uninitiated). Jody and Tommy, the Animals, even the so-called bad guys all have understandable hopes and aspirations. It takes a sure hand and steady control of tone and vocabulary to pull this off consistently in one book, much less several, and Moore is an assured stylist in this regard. His prose is always witty and sympathetic, with faint overtones of the amused observer POV that the British do so well (Moore's American, but Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett cast long shadows in his books).

Overall, You Suck is a well-paced, laugh-inducing romp through territory you think you've seen before, but not like this. It's even, in a strange way, romantic. And hey, anytime a main character gets bronzed twice in the course of the book -- as in the metal, like parents do with baby shoes -- you kind of have to sit up and take notice.

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Overall, a good story

I love the characters that have been developed throughout all of his books, so I think that's what left me a little disappointed. As fun as Goth Girl is, I think that her journal sections were a bit rushed. Moore took these moments to rush through parts of the story that could have been developed in wonderful ways. I get that it was from the teen-ager perspective, but I feel let down that Moore didn't seem to put the same effort into this book as he did Bloodsucking Fiends and A Dirty Job.

Good book, but stick with it to see how good

So this was next on the list of a book club I belong to. And, coincidentally, the hard cover was only $3 at the local Borders, so I picked it up. When I started reading I smacked my forehead and said "This is just a silly young adult novel trying to be adult with the 'F-Bomb' dropped around in it."

But I kept reading, determined to finish it. And I don't know what happened - about 1/3 of the way through it, I quit hating it... and by the 2/3 point I was really liking it.

The characters are well drawn, if a bit one dimensional and the plot is fun but not over-complex. Much of the book seems to be filler, to be honest... but entertaining filler. This book is trash - but enjoyable trash in the end.

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