Taylor, Drew Hayden - The Night Wanderer

[oyceter]

Tiffany Hunter is a fairly normal teenager: she's delighted to be going out with her boyfriend, although her father's not too happy he's white; school is the suck; her dad is super mean; and she really just wants to do exciting stuff and everyone is keeping her from it. And then her father takes on a mysterious lodger who keeps strange hours and never eats anything.

Everything makes this sound like your standard vampire story, except it's not. There's no over-the-top forbidden romance, Tiffany is very much a teenage brat at times, and I want to give it to everyone reading up on MammothFail as an example of SF/F with Native people done well, where there is a sense of history and loss and there are also Native people with phones and sneakers and aren't savage or stoic but just people.

Pierre is an especially great look at vampires done right (says she who is rather tired of vampires); he's creepy and dangerous and not human and very, very, very old. I miss the last part in many vampire books and am always skeptical as to why a several-hundred-year-old entity would want to date a high schooler, and Taylor nicely avoids that. In fact, this reminds me a great deal of Annette Curtis Klause's The Silver Kiss in how it deals with a vampire and a teenaged girl, although making both of them Native changes the story.

And then there's the final chapter, and it has elders teaching the younger generation and the loss of language and culture and history and the past come to life again and finding your roots after you thought you had lost them, and I love it.

Very much recommended, and thanks so much to maerhys for giving it to me!

Comments

[inkstone]

Oooh, this sounds really good. I loved The Silver Kiss because it's one of the rare vampire YA books that portrays the vampires as very old inhuman monsters. That book, along with Blood and Chocolate, are the chief reasons why I wish Klause were a more prolific writer. Selfish, I know.

At any rate, I need to look this book up!

[lady_ganesh]

This sounds excellent. I love a good creepy vampire.

[kore]

Wow, this sounds awesome. //adds to wishlist

[bravecows]

This sounds awesome! *memories post*

[oyceter]

(Have you read Klause's circus one? I checked it out once and never finished. Also, I really need to read Blood and Chocolate, heh.)

Look it up! I really like it and am super sad I read it waaaay after Carl Brandon noms for 2007 were out.

[inkstone]

Alas! The circus one was never able to hold my attention. That's partly why I wish she were more prolific -- so I wouldn't be so sad about not liking one of her books, which come out so rarely. (That's so incredibly selfish, I know.)

Blood & Chocolate is one of my most favorite books ever, and kind of a seminal werewolf book for me.

[oyceter]

I know, I need to read it! Esp. after all the bad werebeast romances I read.... (I've never had a thing for werewolves, so the authors need to work harder to get me on that than they do for, say, angels and demons.)