This week's novel is The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. I went for this one because I like Black's writing and I'm slowly working my way through her novels.
In an alternate history, about ten years ago, a rouge vampire wen to n a biting spree, changing vampirism from a secret society with strict rules to a full blown, unmanageable epidemic. With one bite from a vampire, a human becomes infected or "Cold," becoming violent and craving blood. Once they taste human blood, they become a vampire. In response, the United States has set up Coldtowns, walled off quarantined cities for vampires, the infected, and humans lured in by the video feeds of the vampires' glamorous parties and hopes of eternal life if they can get a vampire to bite them. When Tana wakes up after passing out in a bathtub at a party, she finds that vampires got into the house during the night and slaughtered everyone except her, her newly infected ex-boyfriend, and a vampire boy in chains. Together, they head for Coldtown to submit themselves to quarantine.
Black does a fabulous job of showing different points of view, from those that fear vampires to those who worship them. Coldtown is never-ending, extravagant parties with ball gowns and booming house music and open bars, and Coldtown is homeless kids who barter batteries for rat tacos. Vampire celebrities are famous, with highlights of their parties shown on television along with reality TV shows about vampire hunters.
The other thing I was impressed with is how Black implies a wider world. The humans who come to Coldtown willingly participate in wider on-line groups where they share strategies and assistance. There are little stories mentioned throughout about people who were bitten and how their families tried to hide them instead of sending them to Coldtown, about scientists who infected themselves to study vampirism, about Coldtowns across the country and how they function differently, and how Europe hasn't set up any Coldtowns at all. The details give the impression of a wider, rich world which we only see a part of through Tana's eyes.
The way mass media is portrayed here helps both of these points. People inside Coldtown blog their experiences and post videos that get thousands of followers, but these people generally have a rose tinted view, and that's the view that gets projected out into the larger world. At the last rest stop before Coldtown, they sell touristy T-shirts with slogans like "Corpsebait" and "I take my coffee with your blood in it", which would get the wearer beaten up in Coldtown and probably repel vampires, who want to keep the human population in Coldtown human so they can have a steady food supply. They're choosy about who they bite (who they bite without out-right killing).
I'm also impressed by the structure. It alternates chapters between the main story and short flashbacks to Tana's past when her mom was infected. I might spend some time going through this to see how it all fits together.
***
Next week: One Hundred Years of Solitude, the magical realism classic by Gabriel García Márquez.
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