I was in B&N today and I love the instant bestsellers they invent. These “authors” you have never heard of who suddenly have a display with book 6 of “XXXXXYYYYZZZZ”
A few months ago Vampire Earth sucked me in. Today I managed to resist a charlaine harris knock off about a woman who can control the weather and has a djinn boyfriend and whose covers sport a sexy lady with bedroom eyes, cut off midriff baring shirts and a belly button piercing. These books are lonely! They demand to be read and slain by Angie! Here is the amazon link
Weather Warden Book 8! She actually had an entire shelf in the Sci-Fi / Fantasy section.
I’d never suggest these books are great lit, but I don’t know that you can say that the bookstores are “inventing” their popularity. Clearly there’s some segment of the population buying it and loving it.
I will clarify. Vampire Earth. Never heard of it, not on any rankings. Never see books 1,2,3,4 suddenly around book 5 or 6 its an end cap, shelf filler. Check out the copyrights. E E Knight cranked out 7 vampire earth novels in 3 years.
I’ve never dived into the weird (almost invariably female-written) trashy ero fantasy subgenre. I suspect that it’s not for me. I would totally read Angie tearing a particularly shitty one apart, though!
I still wonder if this is just a case of the bookstores finally realizing that this shit is popular, as opposed to them artifically creating the demand.
I’ve read most of the series, and it’s actually pretty awesome. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth, which has been taken over by vampires and their handlers. But the vampires aren’t like Dracula; they’re actually aliens.
The story arc deals with one character, who is in the human resistance. There’s actually a lot of blow-em-up action stuff, and relatively little emo or romance.
I was quoting that one more for the shelf / marketing aspect. I read them as well. This new one I ran away from however. They all seem to be Roc imprints?
Ok, these Weather Warden books look amazing. I will have to see if the library has them (and stop playing so many damn games so I can get back to reading).
