there are vampires loose in my city!
Aug. 2nd, 2008 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO*chokes*ooooooooooooooooooooo*cough*o.
I finished Blood Noir this morning. Finally. If you're curious, it's not as sex filled as most of her more recent stuff, although it's probably about on par with Merry, who hasn't been getting all that much, all things considered. In fact, the two days of fucking we only get to hear about after, and while much is made about it, it's a plot twist and we don't have to read the actual scenes. Hallelujah? Anyway, that's not what the scream was for. The scream wasn't even for the book ending.
It was for my poor, sweet city getting mentioned and thus sullied in one of her later books. :P
In case you want to see my brains on the wall...
It ain't pretty.
Okay, so, truthfully, it wasn't that bad. It's probably better than quite a few of the things churned out after, say, Narcissus. While the sex goes on and on in the talking about it sense, there really aren't that many sex scenes [two, although one is broken halfway through and then resumed later].
Plot, as it were:
Jason's father is dying, which he finds out about after his girlfriend, Perdy, and he break up. Perdy was a selfish bitch of a seacow and didn't like sharing Jason, in case you needed to know. Nathanial gets it into his head to send Anita with Jason so they cay say, "Hey, dying!Dad, this is my girlfriend. See? I'm totally straight and all those years you thought I was gay? Wrong! Cuz, look! My very homophobic girlfriend! Did I mention girlfriend? Cuz, yeah." And they go along with it.
Moment you know the book is going straight to hell, no matter how creepy the cover looks in the middle of the night:
Jason: My sonuvabitch father is dying.
Anita: You have a dad? How sad for you.
Jason: It is. And I broke up with Perdy.
Anita: *gropes Nathanial* How sad for you? Cuz, y'know, she was a psychoseacowbitchanywaybecauseI-the-great-Anita-donotlikeanythingfemaleever.EVER. Except my mom. I love my mommy. Mommy, why did you leave me? *gropes N again* Happy now!
Jason: Y'know, that's a bit insensitive, especially since I'd like to have sex on this here coffee table if that's okay with you.
Anita: Can't. Table isn't built for three. We could just go to bed. I like bed. mmmm. Bed. *writes love song about bed*
Jason: I'm tired of bed. That's the only place Perdy wanted to do it. Stupidseacowbitch.
Anita: Oh, God, Jason, I'm so sorry. I had no idea! *hugs*
No. Seriously, she says that last bit. Jason calls her on it, and she answers back, "But you love sex!" Well, obviously he and Perdy weren't compatible since she wanted him to be monogamous AND wasn't up for all his kink. Yes. We get it. But you're more freaked out about his sex life than the fact that his father is dying. Or even that he HAS a father who is an ASSHOLE. WTF, mate? To be fair, this was in the bit that they put in the previews section of whatever her last book to go paperback was. So I knew the insanity was coming. I'd just blocked it from memory.
And it still slapped me in the face like an IRC trout. Who knew?
Anyway, Jason and Anita get to use J-C's jet and they fly to Bumfuck, NC. I dunno, it's probably Asheville or something, but it doesn't matter since we spend our time split between the hotel and the hospital and then some undisclosed location at the very, very end. That's right. That's it. Onward! We find out very quickly that Jason looks JUST like his however many times removed cousins, Keith and that other K one whose name is probably mentioned three times. Keith, on the other hand, is mentioned so much that if one were to take a shot of something only vaguely alcoholic each time his name was uttered that one's liver would give out halfway through the book. Bonus points for Summerland [K's last name.] K's father is going to run for president and there's a lot of security going on. Oh, yeah, and Keith is getting married the same week Jason and Anita have chosen to prove J's straightness to his daddy. Perfect.
Blah, blah, blah. We meet Jason's family. There's ancestor Jebediah, and we learn that good ol' Jeb ran a bit of a cult back in the day before the vampires took his creepy ass down. He looks just like Jason [and Keith and the other K] but not in the eyes. Because, lest we forget eyes=windows to the soul. Jeb's probably need cleaning. Up to the hospital! Jason's mother looks just like him, his nice sister is a bit hyper but shares the same grin, his mean sister Bobbi looks like their father, and their father is a bit of an ass, but of COURSE he likes Anita, or respects her or some such crap. Whatever. While this is the premise for the trip, we're really interested in...
Lisa, Keith's fiance, and her crazy drinking problem! See, since Keith's daddy is all political and crap, the press gives a right royal damn what he does. There's a media blitz surrounding the wedding and Jason is pissed when he realizes his life is going to be mucked up because of Keith, once again. So when he and Anita arrive at the hotel, he makes damn sure all cameras on him and he kisses the hell out of Anita... so it looks like Keith is cheating on Lisa days before the wedding. Sweet, huh?
Anyway, Lisa also thinks this, so she gets totally trashed, finds out their room number, and goes to kick "Keith's" ass. Only when Jason gets all nekkid by accident [damn robes!] does she realize that, y'know, he's Jason. The creepy thing is that Lisa looks more like Jason than his own sisters do. Ick. Especially since she's marrying his mirror image and all. For whatever reason, Anita and Jason get invited to the bachelorette party. They go, Anita realizes that something is going on when the guards that have been assigned to J&A by K's family actually act like something dangerous might happen. She does her "I'm cool, man. Cool. Guys should like me because I'm not overly girly" thing and it's not as annoying as I make it out to be.
That's good, since the book gets so intolerable in the next section that it took me a good ten minutes to calm down. At the bach party, the girls are all over Jason. Which Anita knew was going to happen. She's also NOT Jason's girlfriend, but after an hour of watching Jason flirt, she uses her stupid sex-fu powers and realizes that only Lisa wants to jump him, and hell, she's so desperate she'd jump ANYONE. Got that? These girls are old girlfriends, they're flirting, but they aren't doing anything terribly awful and WON'T... and Anita STILL gets pissy when Jason finally remembers to check on the girl he brought to the party. She hauls him aside and tells him that either he tells the girls the truth, and then he can totally hit whatever they throw his way [but they won't except Lisa] OR he acts like a proper boyfriend because she does not APPRECIATE being ignored. She wants to feel SPESHUL, dammit. SPESHUL
*deep breath* They aren't dating, but because their cover [which they're going to have blown in the morning because J-C can't have the world thinking his blood-bitch (Jason) and his actual bitch (Anita!) have run away to get married, they've agreed to an exclusive with some were-something reporter and when the paper hits, they'll be in less trouble] says they are, she wants him to act like it because she's feeling ignored.
Oi, my head.
Anita and Jason go back to their room to makeout after the vampire and weretiger strippers show up, but when they get down to it, Anita accidentally 'calls' the white haired stripper and he appears and takes her weretiger because Princess Sparkles can't fucking shift because then... I don't know. Why can't she, if we're going with the explanation that she's a pan-were? I'm so confused at this point it doesn't matter. Anyway, Crispin the tiger and Jason get into a fight over Anita and then the Mother of All Darkness pops in.
M.Noir: I see... chaos. Yummy. But, um, you guys are being a bit too slow. So, Anita, I need you to rip that cross off. Yes. That one. Mm, good. And that charm that's keeping me from using you like my puppet? Yeah, throw that, too. Ooh, good, good. Now, DANCE, PUPPET.
And they do. Richard appears [Richard! My oasis of sanity until Anita's transfered rage hits you because Laurell's got issues with her ex that she took out on you!] along with his bodyguards who try to reason with the crazy people. Richard gets pissed that Anita spent the last two days fucking perfect strangers, and then Anita realizes she didn't take her pill and OMG, another pregnancy scare. But the weretigers are very... cultish about these things and to take the morning after pill would basically give them reason to declare war on J-C and the rest of the guys back home. Richard AIN'T happy.
And then Anita gets the bright idea to suck her anger back from Richard and it works and suddenly she can talk to J-C again, even though her 'marks' had been closed off, leading most sane people to conclude that M. Noir had marked Anita, too. I should mention that by now we've got the thought that Max, Crispin's Master of the City, and M. Noir are seriously considering marking Anita totally, so the logical next step would be for J-C to fucking finish the goddamned job before someone else does. Just saying.
Anyway, Happy!Richard is back and I start to cry a little. It doesn't last long, because Richard gets his own version of sex-fu and tries to use it to make Anita want to be with him and him only. Anita's kinda sore after being ridden by three men for two days [not to mention anything she might have done BEFORE her trip...] so, no, Richard, she will not take you right now. Woe is you. Richard flips out and keeps going with the "you want to be with me. You love me..." and she keeps falling for it. It's not until Jason's found out to be bound to Anita as her wolf to call and his fear of commitment somehow saves Anita that my head finally explodes in frustration. YOU JUST BROUGHT GOOD RICHARD BACK AND THEN YOU GO AND FUCK IT ALL UP AGAIN. FUCK YOU, LKH. FUCK YOU IN A PLAIN AND VANILLA WAY.
Anita sends Richard away with the warning that maybe his sex-fu would extend to anyone he seriously wanted to marry, not just Anita. Let's not be silly, Anita. His powers will only work for you so you can whine about the metaphysical rape aspect of the whole thing while you blindly ignore your sex-fu rape of an entire species of were in the last book. Not to mention rolling Crispin and reporter!Alex [the fourth in their two-day cruise] and then Rowe out in the hall and... you get the idea.
blah. blah. blah. Anita and Jason get kidnapped, Jason nearly dies, Anita saves the day, and we learn they were kidnapped because Keith ran away to Vegas with some unknown Master of the City's vampire bride. Anita kills Edmond, unknown's human servant, and that frees up Lorna, the runaway vampire bride, to legally marry Keith.
Charleston is now without a Master of the City.
...I'm sure the prepified city is all a front.
...actually, that's where I get a little hazy. On the one hand, cool. On the other hand, considering I nearly died from parts of this book, uncool. Jason doesn't die, things work out, and now I must make sure that the vampires of my sunshiney city don't go apeshit. Fun times.
Little things:
It's taken... however many books, but hearing Richard call the mother of all freakin' darkness "Marmee" is just painful. I know Queen of the Damned was taken and all, but couldn't you find something else to call her?
Anita's thing for just-past jailbait is creepy. Doubley so when commented on by Richard.
A thought: If M. Noir is using Anita, and everyone is well aware of it and even considers taking Anita out so that M. Noir can't fully wake up, you'd think they'd just poison Anita and kill her when they had the first chance. Tell her it'll save all her boytoys and J-C will take good care of them, assuming it doesn't kill him when she croaks, but since she won't take the final marks and people are forever cutting the two of them off, it shouldn't. Kill her.
Was there something in the water to make the latest supernaturally inclined books by various authors have their stars suddenly lose chunks of their memory? Dresden did it, and it's not the first time, it's also similar enough that I must comment. I want to say one of the others I read did it too, but now my memory is hazy...
On the plus side, despite my apparent foaming at the mouth moments above, I lived through Blood Noir and needed it so I could channel my annoyance at something.
November's Offerings
Pullip: Marianne. While the name alone should guarantee her love and a home, it doesn't. I think I actually like her, but I would destroy her in seconds without even meaning to. Also, that's pretty much the only picture I love-love-love, and even then I know she's just too much.
DAL: Charlotte. I love the hair color and the eyes, but again, too much. She's cute, though.
Taeyang: Alberic. He has lovely eyes. Truly. I like the makeup around 'em, too. But no. Just... no.
So, November's safe for me. Which is good, since I just paid off August's. Well.... technically, I'm in the middle of doing that right this second. I can multi task. Yay me.
Today's heroine:
zallia
I finished Blood Noir this morning. Finally. If you're curious, it's not as sex filled as most of her more recent stuff, although it's probably about on par with Merry, who hasn't been getting all that much, all things considered. In fact, the two days of fucking we only get to hear about after, and while much is made about it, it's a plot twist and we don't have to read the actual scenes. Hallelujah? Anyway, that's not what the scream was for. The scream wasn't even for the book ending.
It was for my poor, sweet city getting mentioned and thus sullied in one of her later books. :P
In case you want to see my brains on the wall...
It ain't pretty.
Okay, so, truthfully, it wasn't that bad. It's probably better than quite a few of the things churned out after, say, Narcissus. While the sex goes on and on in the talking about it sense, there really aren't that many sex scenes [two, although one is broken halfway through and then resumed later].
Plot, as it were:
Jason's father is dying, which he finds out about after his girlfriend, Perdy, and he break up. Perdy was a selfish bitch of a seacow and didn't like sharing Jason, in case you needed to know. Nathanial gets it into his head to send Anita with Jason so they cay say, "Hey, dying!Dad, this is my girlfriend. See? I'm totally straight and all those years you thought I was gay? Wrong! Cuz, look! My very homophobic girlfriend! Did I mention girlfriend? Cuz, yeah." And they go along with it.
Moment you know the book is going straight to hell, no matter how creepy the cover looks in the middle of the night:
Jason: My sonuvabitch father is dying.
Anita: You have a dad? How sad for you.
Jason: It is. And I broke up with Perdy.
Anita: *gropes Nathanial* How sad for you? Cuz, y'know, she was a psychoseacowbitchanywaybecauseI-the-great-Anita-donotlikeanythingfemaleever.EVER. Except my mom. I love my mommy. Mommy, why did you leave me? *gropes N again* Happy now!
Jason: Y'know, that's a bit insensitive, especially since I'd like to have sex on this here coffee table if that's okay with you.
Anita: Can't. Table isn't built for three. We could just go to bed. I like bed. mmmm. Bed. *writes love song about bed*
Jason: I'm tired of bed. That's the only place Perdy wanted to do it. Stupidseacowbitch.
Anita: Oh, God, Jason, I'm so sorry. I had no idea! *hugs*
No. Seriously, she says that last bit. Jason calls her on it, and she answers back, "But you love sex!" Well, obviously he and Perdy weren't compatible since she wanted him to be monogamous AND wasn't up for all his kink. Yes. We get it. But you're more freaked out about his sex life than the fact that his father is dying. Or even that he HAS a father who is an ASSHOLE. WTF, mate? To be fair, this was in the bit that they put in the previews section of whatever her last book to go paperback was. So I knew the insanity was coming. I'd just blocked it from memory.
And it still slapped me in the face like an IRC trout. Who knew?
Anyway, Jason and Anita get to use J-C's jet and they fly to Bumfuck, NC. I dunno, it's probably Asheville or something, but it doesn't matter since we spend our time split between the hotel and the hospital and then some undisclosed location at the very, very end. That's right. That's it. Onward! We find out very quickly that Jason looks JUST like his however many times removed cousins, Keith and that other K one whose name is probably mentioned three times. Keith, on the other hand, is mentioned so much that if one were to take a shot of something only vaguely alcoholic each time his name was uttered that one's liver would give out halfway through the book. Bonus points for Summerland [K's last name.] K's father is going to run for president and there's a lot of security going on. Oh, yeah, and Keith is getting married the same week Jason and Anita have chosen to prove J's straightness to his daddy. Perfect.
Blah, blah, blah. We meet Jason's family. There's ancestor Jebediah, and we learn that good ol' Jeb ran a bit of a cult back in the day before the vampires took his creepy ass down. He looks just like Jason [and Keith and the other K] but not in the eyes. Because, lest we forget eyes=windows to the soul. Jeb's probably need cleaning. Up to the hospital! Jason's mother looks just like him, his nice sister is a bit hyper but shares the same grin, his mean sister Bobbi looks like their father, and their father is a bit of an ass, but of COURSE he likes Anita, or respects her or some such crap. Whatever. While this is the premise for the trip, we're really interested in...
Lisa, Keith's fiance, and her crazy drinking problem! See, since Keith's daddy is all political and crap, the press gives a right royal damn what he does. There's a media blitz surrounding the wedding and Jason is pissed when he realizes his life is going to be mucked up because of Keith, once again. So when he and Anita arrive at the hotel, he makes damn sure all cameras on him and he kisses the hell out of Anita... so it looks like Keith is cheating on Lisa days before the wedding. Sweet, huh?
Anyway, Lisa also thinks this, so she gets totally trashed, finds out their room number, and goes to kick "Keith's" ass. Only when Jason gets all nekkid by accident [damn robes!] does she realize that, y'know, he's Jason. The creepy thing is that Lisa looks more like Jason than his own sisters do. Ick. Especially since she's marrying his mirror image and all. For whatever reason, Anita and Jason get invited to the bachelorette party. They go, Anita realizes that something is going on when the guards that have been assigned to J&A by K's family actually act like something dangerous might happen. She does her "I'm cool, man. Cool. Guys should like me because I'm not overly girly" thing and it's not as annoying as I make it out to be.
That's good, since the book gets so intolerable in the next section that it took me a good ten minutes to calm down. At the bach party, the girls are all over Jason. Which Anita knew was going to happen. She's also NOT Jason's girlfriend, but after an hour of watching Jason flirt, she uses her stupid sex-fu powers and realizes that only Lisa wants to jump him, and hell, she's so desperate she'd jump ANYONE. Got that? These girls are old girlfriends, they're flirting, but they aren't doing anything terribly awful and WON'T... and Anita STILL gets pissy when Jason finally remembers to check on the girl he brought to the party. She hauls him aside and tells him that either he tells the girls the truth, and then he can totally hit whatever they throw his way [but they won't except Lisa] OR he acts like a proper boyfriend because she does not APPRECIATE being ignored. She wants to feel SPESHUL, dammit. SPESHUL
*deep breath* They aren't dating, but because their cover [which they're going to have blown in the morning because J-C can't have the world thinking his blood-bitch (Jason) and his actual bitch (Anita!) have run away to get married, they've agreed to an exclusive with some were-something reporter and when the paper hits, they'll be in less trouble] says they are, she wants him to act like it because she's feeling ignored.
Oi, my head.
Anita and Jason go back to their room to makeout after the vampire and weretiger strippers show up, but when they get down to it, Anita accidentally 'calls' the white haired stripper and he appears and takes her weretiger because Princess Sparkles can't fucking shift because then... I don't know. Why can't she, if we're going with the explanation that she's a pan-were? I'm so confused at this point it doesn't matter. Anyway, Crispin the tiger and Jason get into a fight over Anita and then the Mother of All Darkness pops in.
M.Noir: I see... chaos. Yummy. But, um, you guys are being a bit too slow. So, Anita, I need you to rip that cross off. Yes. That one. Mm, good. And that charm that's keeping me from using you like my puppet? Yeah, throw that, too. Ooh, good, good. Now, DANCE, PUPPET.
And they do. Richard appears [Richard! My oasis of sanity until Anita's transfered rage hits you because Laurell's got issues with her ex that she took out on you!] along with his bodyguards who try to reason with the crazy people. Richard gets pissed that Anita spent the last two days fucking perfect strangers, and then Anita realizes she didn't take her pill and OMG, another pregnancy scare. But the weretigers are very... cultish about these things and to take the morning after pill would basically give them reason to declare war on J-C and the rest of the guys back home. Richard AIN'T happy.
And then Anita gets the bright idea to suck her anger back from Richard and it works and suddenly she can talk to J-C again, even though her 'marks' had been closed off, leading most sane people to conclude that M. Noir had marked Anita, too. I should mention that by now we've got the thought that Max, Crispin's Master of the City, and M. Noir are seriously considering marking Anita totally, so the logical next step would be for J-C to fucking finish the goddamned job before someone else does. Just saying.
Anyway, Happy!Richard is back and I start to cry a little. It doesn't last long, because Richard gets his own version of sex-fu and tries to use it to make Anita want to be with him and him only. Anita's kinda sore after being ridden by three men for two days [not to mention anything she might have done BEFORE her trip...] so, no, Richard, she will not take you right now. Woe is you. Richard flips out and keeps going with the "you want to be with me. You love me..." and she keeps falling for it. It's not until Jason's found out to be bound to Anita as her wolf to call and his fear of commitment somehow saves Anita that my head finally explodes in frustration. YOU JUST BROUGHT GOOD RICHARD BACK AND THEN YOU GO AND FUCK IT ALL UP AGAIN. FUCK YOU, LKH. FUCK YOU IN A PLAIN AND VANILLA WAY.
Anita sends Richard away with the warning that maybe his sex-fu would extend to anyone he seriously wanted to marry, not just Anita. Let's not be silly, Anita. His powers will only work for you so you can whine about the metaphysical rape aspect of the whole thing while you blindly ignore your sex-fu rape of an entire species of were in the last book. Not to mention rolling Crispin and reporter!Alex [the fourth in their two-day cruise] and then Rowe out in the hall and... you get the idea.
blah. blah. blah. Anita and Jason get kidnapped, Jason nearly dies, Anita saves the day, and we learn they were kidnapped because Keith ran away to Vegas with some unknown Master of the City's vampire bride. Anita kills Edmond, unknown's human servant, and that frees up Lorna, the runaway vampire bride, to legally marry Keith.
Charleston is now without a Master of the City.
...I'm sure the prepified city is all a front.
...actually, that's where I get a little hazy. On the one hand, cool. On the other hand, considering I nearly died from parts of this book, uncool. Jason doesn't die, things work out, and now I must make sure that the vampires of my sunshiney city don't go apeshit. Fun times.
Little things:
It's taken... however many books, but hearing Richard call the mother of all freakin' darkness "Marmee" is just painful. I know Queen of the Damned was taken and all, but couldn't you find something else to call her?
Anita's thing for just-past jailbait is creepy. Doubley so when commented on by Richard.
A thought: If M. Noir is using Anita, and everyone is well aware of it and even considers taking Anita out so that M. Noir can't fully wake up, you'd think they'd just poison Anita and kill her when they had the first chance. Tell her it'll save all her boytoys and J-C will take good care of them, assuming it doesn't kill him when she croaks, but since she won't take the final marks and people are forever cutting the two of them off, it shouldn't. Kill her.
Was there something in the water to make the latest supernaturally inclined books by various authors have their stars suddenly lose chunks of their memory? Dresden did it, and it's not the first time, it's also similar enough that I must comment. I want to say one of the others I read did it too, but now my memory is hazy...
On the plus side, despite my apparent foaming at the mouth moments above, I lived through Blood Noir and needed it so I could channel my annoyance at something.
November's Offerings
Pullip: Marianne. While the name alone should guarantee her love and a home, it doesn't. I think I actually like her, but I would destroy her in seconds without even meaning to. Also, that's pretty much the only picture I love-love-love, and even then I know she's just too much.
DAL: Charlotte. I love the hair color and the eyes, but again, too much. She's cute, though.
Taeyang: Alberic. He has lovely eyes. Truly. I like the makeup around 'em, too. But no. Just... no.
So, November's safe for me. Which is good, since I just paid off August's. Well.... technically, I'm in the middle of doing that right this second. I can multi task. Yay me.
Today's heroine:
zallia![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-02 02:23 pm (UTC)But then they had to go all Rococo on me. Charlotte I think I can resist (not a huge fan of yellow), but I must and will have Marianne. 16,000 yen or not. I'll just have to cut back on the new books for a few weeks....
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-02 02:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-02 02:43 pm (UTC)*goes to look for the J-dolls* And ohmydollygods, what threw up on them? They look pretty, but it's hard to tell under all that... interesting fabric. Tis a shame, since I might've fallen for East if not for her outfit.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-02 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-02 04:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-03 10:49 am (UTC)But I wish she'd hurry up and make up with her muse or I'd reach my limit. If either happens, expect news every hour on the hour.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-02 06:25 pm (UTC)Thanks to Twilight, I want to read more vamp books, but from the sounds of it there really aren't many worth investing in? Do you read Charlene Harris? That's the one the TV show's coming out for right? Our dumb library doesn't have the first two books. Grrr.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-03 10:56 am (UTC)I don't understand much of fashion, but I think I might die if I saw someone dressed like the J-dolls, particularly... West, I think. Just die.
The closest I've come to Charlaine Harris is reading one of her short stories in an anthology or two. They weren't bad, but I've yet to pick up the series they're set in. I've heard mostly good stuff, though. Cursed library! The rule is you must get the first two and then ignore the thought that anything else exists until whatever the absolute newest one is, once it's at least eight books removed. Or maybe that's just ours?
*cough*Kim Harrison*cough* While Rachel's a witch, she's got plenty of vampires popping up and evil tomatoes! Vamp books are a mixed bag and it depends on your cheese levels, I think. Also, your average vampire author seems to be batshit crazy, and it almost never ends in a good sort of crazy, even if it starts out that way.