Review: Bite Me by Christopher Moore

I have, of course, gone on record as not being the world's biggest vampire fan. I prefer characters not potentially vanting to suck my blood. But, as I have also noted before, I do love Christopher Moore's warped (or should that be varped) sense of humor and so I dip into the world of the undead for him. Unfortunately, this third and final installment in his vampite trilogy didn't live up to the other two for me. Because it is Moore, it is still funny but it pales in comparison to Bloodsucking Fiends and doesn't quite reach the heights of the middling funny of You Suck, the previous two books.

Picking up where You Suck left off, Abby Normal, Jody and Tommy's minion, has trapped our intrepid vampires in bronze statues (aptly modeled after Rodin's The Kiss). But while Jody and Tommy are out of commission, a new threat crops up, requiring Abby and her new boyfriend to take on a blue whore vampire, the Animals, and Chet the Bald Vampire Kitty who is turning all the cats in San Francisco and busily stalking human prey. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? That just makes it a typical Christopher Moore story. Somehow he manages to take completely disparate plot lines, even wacko plot lines, and weave them together so that they not only work but that they make the reader giggle.

Abby Normal is a major focus in this third book of the trilogy and that was a bit of a problem for me since I didn't love Abby in the previous book and found nothing here to change my mind. She is an annoying and ridiculous character and in a book full of entertaining zanies, that is a distinct handicap. I winced each time I turned the page and was faced with her journal (narrated in her own unique voice, a strange combination of goth and bubble-gum) or her over the top adolescent shenanigans, especially when in the company of her boyfriend. However, given that it was Moore and that I wanted to know what happened to the rest of the crazy characters and whether or not they would be successful in their quest to save San Francisco from the hordes of the undead, I soldiered on with the book. I even chuckled a time or two.

I'm sure that my high expectations for Moore's work made this perfectly adequate book feel more disappointing than it otherwise would have been. This is probably really only of interest to established Moore fans or those who have already started the trilogy and want to follow it through to the end. Don't make this book your first ride at Christopher Moore's carnival. It's not a bad book, it's just not one of his best. And his best, let me tell you, they are worth the price of admission.