The last three weeks I've focused on books for adult readers, but there have been a shocking amount of quality horror stories bubbling up out of the young adult fiction boom of the last decade. Scott Westerfeld's vampire novel PEEPS is just one of those titles.
I've often said that good teen fiction, regardless of genre, transcends its young target audience and will also appeal to grown-up readers. And why not? A great story is a great story, period. And that's what PEEPS is. It also happens to be a revisionist take on vampires that had the (mis)fortune of being released back in 2005, right before TWILIGHT defanged the fangers for years to come. Imagine what the contemporary vampire landscape would look like if this book, which posited vampirism as a parasitic infection/infestation, topped international best-seller lists instead. Probably very different and much more interesting.
As I wrote in my spotlight on the novel in my Library of the Damned column in RM#143:
"PEEPS is the story of nineteen-year-old biology major Cal, a carrier of the vampire parasite. Being a carrier means he gets the benefits of improved strength, sight and smell without losing himself to the murderous urges of the parasite's less fortunate human hosts, but he's also perpetually horny. This is how vampirism spreads: it's a sexually transmitted disease, passed along via the exchange of saliva and bodily fluids. Cal works for the Night Watch, a centuries-old organization that hunts down the most feral and dangerous of the "parasite-positives" (nicknamed Peeps) and ships them away for treatment. This means Cal spends a lot of time in dark, subterranean places contending with hordes of rats that have become infected as a result of eating the Peeps' discarded scraps; rodents which will literally gnaw apart anyone they see as a danger to the leader of their brood.
But just like real-life parasites, there is ultimately a purpose for vampirism's existence and evolution, and, without giving away any spoilers, I will say, therein lies much of the magic of this novel. It's not a supernatural horror story, but rather one scientifically rooted in cold, hard fact. This is driven home in each of PEEPS' even-numbered chapters, which provide corollary lessons on actual parasites found in the animal kingdom and within our bodies."
Vampires have long lived in the domain of the supernatural, but as PEEPS, its sequel THE LAST DAYS, and Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro's THE STRAIN trilogy have so amply proved, placing them within the vectors of our current knowledge of diseases and parasites opens up a whole host of previously untapped narratives.
PEEPS is available from Amazon.com for under $8 (for paperback or eBook). For more information about the author and his other works (most of which tread closer to science fiction than horror), visit Scott Westerfeld's official website at scottwesterfeld.com.
ADDENDUM: I just discovered that Scott also has a Wattpad account. You can follow him here at @scottwesterfeld.
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Books to Die For
Non-FictionA book for book lovers, this is collection of reading recommendations and author interviews, as they appeared on Rue-Morgue.com, as well as my various #fabfictionfridays shout-outs on Wattpad. Here you'll find mainstream releases, Wattpad serials, s...
