Recent Read: The Vampire Diaries - L. J. Smith
Spoiler Alert!!!
The following review contains spoilers for the above novels.
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Looking around my journal, you might be inclined to think that I like The Vampire Diaries. I hate to break it to you, but you'd be wrong. I don't like The Vampire Diaries.
I'm obsessed with The Vampire Diaries.
Well, let me clarify: I'm obsessed with The Vampire Diaries TV show.
Last year a friend of mine came across the book series in a shop, bought them, and then spent a couple of weeks telling me and some other friends what happens in them. When she announced the TV show would be starting, I brushed it off, mostly because what I'd heard of the books didn't sound particularly interesting, but very melodramatic.
Jump to July of this year. On a whim, I decided to check out the show. I honestly can't remember what made me want to; at that point I was clueless to the hype surrounding the show and the breadth of the fandom. But I watched the Pilot, just to see what it was all about. And then I watched the next episode...and the next episode...and the next episode. 4 days later, I finished Season 1.
It's only in the last couple of weeks that I became curious about the books. Since getting involved in the VD fandom, I've learned that the books are vastly different from the show and that, I think, is what spurred my curiosity. So I decided I'd track down the first one at the library. Luckily for me, that wasn't necessary; Book 1, The Awakening, is featured in audiobook format as a special feature on the Season 1 DVD.
To cut a fairly long story short, I listened to the first book and then decided to read the other three (The Struggle, The Fury, and The Reunion) as well.
Elena Gilbert is a pretty and popular high school student. Surrounded by a group of admirers who cater to her every whim, Elena is used to getting what she wants...and when the new school year starts, what she wants is Stefan Salvatore, the mysterious new guy in town. As she and Stefan grow closer and fall in love, she learns his terrifying secret--he's a vampire, as is his handsome older brother, Damon. The three of them must band together to save their town from the evil supernatural force from Stefan and Damon's past.
I'm going to be upfront about this: these books are not the best in the world. Not by a long shot. They're simply written, short, and not particularly complex as far as the plot goes. It follows the girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, girl discovers boy is a vampire, formula of current YA vampire fiction (although these were first published in the early 90s, so no, it's not a Twilight rip-off). TVD is, however, darker than Twilight. It has undertones you'd be more likely to find in horror stories than in the YA vampire fiction of today.
This is one thing I definitely liked about the books: Smith doesn't shy away from gruesome or scary scenes. I get the impression she understands that, while teenagers (especially teenage girls) enjoy a good love story, they also like to be frightened.
The characters are, I admit, what I was most interested in. Having crossed over from the show, I was eager to see how they matched up. Elena is the most changed. In the books she starts off very selfish and a bit of a Queen Bee, about as opposite as it is possible to be from the Elena on the show. But there is definite character development and growth. As the series progresses, she begins to think more about her friends and family, and how her own actions affect them, until she finally makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the town she lives in.
As for the Salvatore Brothers, well, I was surprised, at least partially. I make no secret of the fact that show!Stefan bores me. I didn't realise he was even more boring in the books. He's very staid and quiet, but he doesn't really have much going for him, in my opinion. His seriousness means there's little, if any, room for a sense of humor, and he's prone to turning molehills into mountains.
Damon is my favourite character on the show so I was the most worried about my reaction to him in the books. All things considered, he was still the most enjoyable character. His sense of humor is there, his darkness and danger are there, his hidden vulnerabilities are there. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the little quirks attributed to Damon on the show (the smirk, the head tilt, the "eye thing") are all there in the books too. Really, my biggest regret is that neither Stefan nor Damon have as much depth in the books as they do on the show.
In terms of the back story, things are very different. In the show, Damon and Stefan were turned in 1864, during the time of the Civil War, putting them in the range of 160-170 years old. In the books, however, they were turned in the late 1500s in Florence, Italy, which increases their age to about 500. In the show, they were best friends during their human years; in the books, they hated each other. As with most elements of the story, Damon and Stefan's history is more complex on the show than in the novels. There are more secrets, and more decisions made then that have consequences in the present. In the novels, things come together rather easily, which I found disappointing, just as I found Katherine, the vampire who turned them, disappointing. Maybe I've just been spoiled by the acting of Nina Dobrev, but book!Katherine was nothing but a let down. I wanted her to be meaner, more manipulative. Instead, she came across very childlike, and not in a good way.
All in all, I still prefer the TV show. The characters are more developed and the plot more complex. There are, I feel, more shades of gray in the TV show. Having said that, I really believe that my enjoyment of the books was influenced by my love for the show. If I'd come into the books cold, like people did before the show aired, I daresay I would have been happy with them. Not in love with them, no, but I would have liked them well enough. As it is, though, I had extremely high expectations that couldn't be met.
I plan to read the next series of TVD books, but I'm not going to buy them (though I'm not going to buy the first series either). From what I hear they're a bit of a step down in terms of quality, but I'll have to decide that for myself when I read them.
Rating: (a generous) 3 out of 5.
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