Come on. How could you not want to try a vampire book called You Suck? I mean, seriously. That's not something I could ever dream of passing up. Couple that with the fact that this is the latest book by Christopher Moore, one of the best, funniest novelists working today, and it was a must buy for me.

So, the big question then, is, is the book any good? Well, not only does it not suck, it's absolutely fantastic. But more on that later. First let me tell you a little of what the book's all about.

If you know Christopher Moore, then you know that, for the most part, he doesn't write sequels. He continues to fashion new and bizarre worlds with each outing. Yeah, there's the exception of The Stupidest Angel, which borrows a couple of characters from previous books, but I look at that as more of an all-star jam than as a sequel. You Suck, however, is a flat-out sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends. But don't let that scare you off from reading it. You can drop right in on a San Francisco suffering a semi-plague of the undead and stoned Safeway stock-boys with ease and delight.

C. Thomas Flood is just your average nineteen-year-old Midwestern transplant to San Francisco. He's the leader of the Animals, a group of stock-boys at the local Safeway, who all work the night shift. And he's fallen in love with a gorgeous redhead named Jody. It's just his tough luck that Jody has been turned into a vampire and left to fend for herself. She decides that Flood is the perfect companion for the ages and turns him into a vampire as well.

Which, as you might guess, does not go as well as planned. They have to recruit a new Renfield to run their errands during the day and protect them. Flood decides on sixteen-year-old goth girl Abby Normal (a small character from Moore's A Dirty Job. Not the best of choices.

An even worse choice is when Flood gets distracted while trying to rid himself of the ancient vampire who turned Jody and tried to kill her. That turns the old vampire loose and he decides to finish the job he started. And then there's the Animals, who decide to do a little vampire hunting of their own -- once they get back from a Vegas splurge with a blue-painted hooker named, ahem, Blue.

Moore pulls off the complicated plot, the numerous quirky characters, and other small drop-in appearances of characters from previous books with an aplomb and a verve I just couldn't believe. He takes a "what should be" stock characters and infuses them with love and life and left me with no choice but to sympathize with and root for them.

My only quibble -- and the reason this book gets nine quills instead of ten -- was with the ending. It was much too similar to the ending of Bloodsucking Fiends and an obvious setup for another sequel. While the ending in the first book was a brilliant piece choice by Moore, here it felt a little forced, as if he had to wrap up the book quickly and get on to the next.

You Suck is definitely a book you'll want to add to your collection.

Reviewed by Rich Jones
© February 2007