'The Coldest Girl in Cold Town' Review
Why Holly Black almost entirely redeemed teen vampire fiction for me...
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Normally do all that I can to avoid teen vampire fic but after receiving a free proof copy of Holly Black's new novel I was pleased to see some tired teen vamp tropes being subverted. For starters, the book begins with the human girl rescuing two boys, one a vampire, one her ex-boyfriend who is infected with vampire blood. So it's established from the start that our human girl heroine doesn't need magical super-human blood drinkers to rescue her. In fact the vampire boys are more like sick rabid dogs that rely on her to take care of them. The human girl Tana drives them all to the nearest 'cold town', a quarantine zone for vampires and those infected by vampire blood. I loved how Black satirizes and subverts the false glamorous image of vampires, particularly through the vampire fangirl Midnight, who films her own transformation into a vampire which leads to her losing control and draining her twin brother to death. Black doesn't do the typical teen fiction thing of having good vampires who control their urges and bad vampires who are just remorseless killers. Vampires are monsters; they are crazy blood freaks. And the teenagers who think vampires are so beautiful and magical suffer terribly for this false perception.
My biggest issue with this novel was the central Tana/Gavriel ship which threatens to drag the story down to the usual boring human girl is seduced by incredibly pretty yet dangerous and tortured vampire boy horseshit that I can't abide. The far more interesting relationship in the novel was that of Tana/Adrian. What a perfect way to de-romanticize this type of teen human/vampire story than by having the boy turning into a vampire being your annoying cheating ex-boyfriend. Tana has a personal history with Adrian so she won't just give up on him and leave him to die and turn into a monster. But since she no longer has romantic feelings for Adrian she is able to see his transformation as horrific, disturbing and even pitiful. The Tana/Gavriel ship is the far more conventional romantic angle for this teen genre and therefore a lot less interesting to me. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the ending where Tana is determined to go through 88 days of painful withdrawal from her vampire blood infection so she has the chance to leave the Cold Town and go back to her family. It is hinted that if Tana fails in her withdrawal then she and Gavriel will be vampire lovers who'll go around only drinking the blood of "bad vampires!" not poor human victims, which would thereby render them into those morally pretentious 'good' blood-drinking vampires that I loathe with all my soul.
But here's the thing - Tana becoming a vampire and staying with her pretty vampire boyfriend forever is the absolute last resort. Tana's goal at the end of the book is to hold on to her humanity and follow her little sister back home. I felt like Black was still offering hints to appease the core audience who'd want the typical 'human girl turns vampire and stays with her vampire boyfriend forever and never sees her family again' ending, but I appreciated that Tana herself wanted the exact opposite at the end of the book.
Normally do all that I can to avoid teen vampire fic but after receiving a free proof copy of Holly Black's new novel I was pleased to see some tired teen vamp tropes being subverted. For starters, the book begins with the human girl rescuing two boys, one a vampire, one her ex-boyfriend who is infected with vampire blood. So it's established from the start that our human girl heroine doesn't need magical super-human blood drinkers to rescue her. In fact the vampire boys are more like sick rabid dogs that rely on her to take care of them. The human girl Tana drives them all to the nearest 'cold town', a quarantine zone for vampires and those infected by vampire blood. I loved how Black satirizes and subverts the false glamorous image of vampires, particularly through the vampire fangirl Midnight, who films her own transformation into a vampire which leads to her losing control and draining her twin brother to death. Black doesn't do the typical teen fiction thing of having good vampires who control their urges and bad vampires who are just remorseless killers. Vampires are monsters; they are crazy blood freaks. And the teenagers who think vampires are so beautiful and magical suffer terribly for this false perception.
My biggest issue with this novel was the central Tana/Gavriel ship which threatens to drag the story down to the usual boring human girl is seduced by incredibly pretty yet dangerous and tortured vampire boy horseshit that I can't abide. The far more interesting relationship in the novel was that of Tana/Adrian. What a perfect way to de-romanticize this type of teen human/vampire story than by having the boy turning into a vampire being your annoying cheating ex-boyfriend. Tana has a personal history with Adrian so she won't just give up on him and leave him to die and turn into a monster. But since she no longer has romantic feelings for Adrian she is able to see his transformation as horrific, disturbing and even pitiful. The Tana/Gavriel ship is the far more conventional romantic angle for this teen genre and therefore a lot less interesting to me. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the ending where Tana is determined to go through 88 days of painful withdrawal from her vampire blood infection so she has the chance to leave the Cold Town and go back to her family. It is hinted that if Tana fails in her withdrawal then she and Gavriel will be vampire lovers who'll go around only drinking the blood of "bad vampires!" not poor human victims, which would thereby render them into those morally pretentious 'good' blood-drinking vampires that I loathe with all my soul.
But here's the thing - Tana becoming a vampire and staying with her pretty vampire boyfriend forever is the absolute last resort. Tana's goal at the end of the book is to hold on to her humanity and follow her little sister back home. I felt like Black was still offering hints to appease the core audience who'd want the typical 'human girl turns vampire and stays with her vampire boyfriend forever and never sees her family again' ending, but I appreciated that Tana herself wanted the exact opposite at the end of the book.