You think the twilight books are bad?

You must not have heard of the Vampire Diaries.

Check them out on Wikipedia

They make twilight look like a Charles Dicken's novel.

For Twilight lovers...in case you haven't heard (which if you're a Twilight lover you probably already have ) until July 5th there's a free reading of the Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: http://ld-breetannerbook.libredigital.com/index.html I liked it! In fact I think I may re-read Twilight as I actually forgot most of the third book references.

Have any of you guys read the fantasy series called Mordant's Need? Highly recommend it.
No offense to fans, but I thought House of Night was worse than Twilight. Yep.

'House of Night' worse than 'Twilight'? Yep. But not bad for an 'I-don't-want-to-think-about-what-I'm-reading' type reading book. Yeah. It's kinda like those TV shows you watch to shut your brain off... At least, for me.

If anyone is looking for a good retelling, Jessica Day George has some. (I think her 'Princess of the Midnight Ball' was brought up earlier in the thread.) 'Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow' is a retelling of East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon, which is neat, because you don't see that tale often. 'Princess of the Midnight Ball' is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and 'Princess of Glass' is a retelling of Cinderella that is a sequel to 'Princess of the Midnight Ball'. I enjoyed 'Princess of Glass' because it played with the story so much.

And to anyone who has not read 'The Princess Bride', please go read it. It's wonderful. I just read it, and I wonder why I had never read it before.

I have been reading the Braking the Wall series by Jane Lindskold (It starts with Thirteen Orphans) and highly recommend it for the interesting plot and unusual fantasy setting.

@Justin: Vampire Diaries? But people over at the Anti-Twilight forums told me that it's better than Twilight. Are you sure you weren't talking about Vampire Academy? I heard THAT was the one that sucked.

@Justin: Vampire Diaries? But people over at the Anti-Twilight forums told me that it's better than Twilight. Are you sure you weren't talking about Vampire Academy? I heard THAT was the one that sucked.

I haven't done Vampire Diaries, so I can't say anything on that - but the one series to avoid is - Vampire Kisses.
And yeah, I think House of Night is just awful. The girl is actually, under then surface 'teenage rebellion', quite similar to Bella. She's angsty, loves wallowing in self-pity, and is always juggling guys.
She's also got the 'everyone likes her' thing going, and the super cool talents just make me yawn. Since when was having super cool powers (cooler than anyone else's) a prerequisite for being special and interesting?

A very good point, Seraphina. The books that I enjoy reading the most are character driven and the adventures that they have make sense. I enjoy most of the books written by Mercedes Lackey for that reason.

@seraphina: Vampire Kisses? Whoa, that was also one of the recommended vampire books among Twilight haters...

House of Night is so bad it's worst than Twilight, which had been one of the worst book I've ever read in my life. Blah, the first book was so awful that I just want nothing more than to rip it into shreds then bash myself on the head with an encyclopedia. At least with Twilight I can go through it rather painlessly because the only thing that bothered me about it is how boring the story is. Because of that I usually just skim through briefly and can't get into the details, so I didn't get all the bad stuff people have been saying happened in the story.

It's not fantasy, but... 'Secret Santa' by Sabrina James has to be the worst book I've ever read-- that beats out House of the Night. *shudders at the memory*

Although, I guess if those books get kids to read, then that's a good thing, right? Right??

Anyways...

Has anyone read The Princess and the Hound? It's quite good.
::He is a prince and heir to a kingdom threatened on all sides, possessor of the forbidden animal magic.
She is a princess from a rival kingdom, the daughter her father never wanted, isolated from all except her hound.
In this lush and beautifully written fairy-tale romance, a prince, a princess, and two kingdoms are joined in the aftermath of a war. Proud, stubborn, and bound to marry for duty, George and Beatrice will steal your heart—but will they fall in love? ::
I don't like that summary, but am too lazy to type one up, so...

---sidenote
Are book reads even being done anymore?

Get kids to read: err, maybe? Though if they keep reading bad writing though its not really helping anyone.

never heard of that book.

As for books read: I have a long to read list but unfortunately not the time.

I did start on pride and prejudice and zombies. It was pretty funny and matched the original style pretty well.

Lately I have read nothing that isn't either out here or my own drivel.

I am waiting for the next installment of Terry Sanderson's take on the final Wheel of Time Series. There will be 2 more installments. He has so far done much better than I expected and I am quite hopeful for the big finsh. 15 books in a trilogy is a little much.

wait, i thought a trilogy only 3 books. How it end up being 15? O_O!!!

Oh yeah, I read a lot of fanfic these days since they generally are short and easy reads (though I did one that was 280 pages and still going). Does that count if the fanfic is long and fantasy related? >.>

@ KTC - Robert Jordan fell in love with all of his characters inb 'the Wheel of Time' series, and each book got longer and more involved. It was going to be a trilogy, and then it was going to end at 5 books. Some of the the books are as long as J K Rowling's Deathly Hallows only with print half the size. He died of cancer before the final 'tome' could be edited and sent to press, but he did lay out the structure and much of the actual text, and wrote the ending, writing up to the day he died. Brian Sanderson has stepped up to the plate and taken the work that Robert Jordan left behind and working with Robert Jordan's wife and Editor he is finishing the tale with a massive 3 volume effort. I really like the way he has done it. He has not tried to copy Robert Jordan's style, but he has managed to stay true to it AND the story, pulling all the threads together.

Err, hi. Seeing as it's the DLRF, i thought i'd share a couple of fun, hilarious light reads about dragons by katie macalister. But this is NOT for YOUNG readers. Haha.

Guardian/Green Dragons Series/Aisling Grey Series (remembers AM's own aisling and waves. Hi aisling!): 4 books
Silver Dragons Series (spin-off from the Aisling grey series): 3 books
Light dragons (another spin-off): 1 book.

She also has books on vamps, steampunk and other paranormal stuff. of course she also has normal stuff. haha.


~o~
I've actually read vampire diaries like 8/9 years ago, then promptly forgot about it so i was a bit surprised when a modernized tv series about it appeared... but comparing it to twilight, i'd prefer vdiaries... i don't like bella... sorry fans. Overall though, I like Sookie better. Much better. (Sookie Stackhouse novels)

anyway, for vamp lovers out there, try these authors. They'd give you a wide variety of ideas regarding vamps. The trouble with vampire novels nowadays are that they are so many it is hard to find one that can be appropriate for young readers. I think that's why the twilight series and v.diaries hit off.

+Laurell k hamilton - Anita Blake: absolutely NOT for YOUNG Readers
+Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse/ True Blood Series
+Christopher Pike
+Lynsay sands - Argeneau Series: Definitely doesn't fit the stereotype vampire description. Series but each book is a story of its own.
+Jeaniene frost
+Mary Janice Davidson - not confined to vamp novels...
+Kimberly raye
+richelle mead - Vampire Academy (i think this was already assassinated by d_a above. hehe.)
+anne rice (of course)
+Bram Stoker (c'mon, a vampire lover who doesn't know drac??? ridiculous. )

Can't think of more but they're floating round the web. Ah. most of them are romantic in nature. sigh. i think they're trying to give a humanistic side to the monsters.

P.N. Elrod wrote the original Vampire Files, a series with a vampire detective set in the 20-30's for most of the books. The writing is overall good with some nice character development and good plots but shorter novels.

Agas: I agree 100% on your thoughts with House of Night. Vampire Diaries is like Twilight except Jacob is another vampire. LOL.

Vampire Academy, is, surprisingly, the best of the bad lot. It's like Gossip Girl with vampires.
The later ones are more serious, though.

For lighter fantasy, I recommend Mortal Instruments. Not terribly good, but easy, light, entertaining, and full of smartass one-liners.

I liked the initial Anita Blake books, but as time went on and she adds more guys to her harem, it became more steam and less substance. She's got, like what, 17 books? Talk about flogging a dead horse.

I've been told that Vampire Academy is WORSE than Vampire Diaries, and from what little of both books I've read, I agree with that statement. I mean, Vampire Diaries and Twilight are just cliche love triangles, so it's no surprise that they're similar. Seen those kind of love triangles everywhere.

I think I've grown to despise first person narrative novels, so I usually roll my eyes and leave the book if it's in first person.

Mortal Instruments is written by the person infamous for writing "The Draco Trilogy" fanfic and has been accused of plagiarism everywhere. Who knows if half of those snark are stolen from some obscure media not many people know about? I'm totally coming with a very bad bias, so I'm not even interested to touch it. Not to mention that there's a praise by STEPHENIE MEYER on the cover of the book. That is totally a turn-off.

I'm still trying to get my hands on the British print of Skulduggery Pleasant: The Faceless Ones. It's the official cover with the cool art and whatshiz. It has a gritty and funky graphic novel feel to it. The American version is practically a BLANK cover. It's got some design which I could hardly remember, probably a door or something, but nothing compared to the original British cover, which all the more proves how terrible it is because it didn't leave an impression on me and I can't even remember what it looked like.

I watched the first season of the series (VD) and tried reading,
reading vampire diaries irritated me maybe because of the unusual protagonist, the usual ones are girl next door, someone who have conflicts etc. etc.


just started reading the lightning thief, everything is happening so fast though that doesn't make it boring