Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore
When reading a Christopher Moore book, it is best to do this in the privacy of one’s own home. Reason being, it is most impossible to avoid laughing out loud. Oh yes, the dreadful (LOL) in its most literal sense. Somehow, Mr. Moore has placed himself within the mind of a teenage, goth punk chick and made it totally believable. This spunky punk is our protagonist, calling herself Abby Normal, who relays all her trials and tribulations via diary entries on fighting evil, while simultaneously keeping her ultimate coolness in check amidst all the danky, danky doom.
Bite Me is filled with standout characters galore. “Foo Dog” is Abby’s Chinese scientist boyfriend, who happens to know how to construct UV protective jackets, weapons using light as a destructive force and is working on a potion to revert the undead back into the humans they once were. Abby (who’d prefer a stab at becoming a vampire) affectionately refers to him as her “manga-haired love monkey.” Her best friend is Jared, a gay gothy teen who harbors the most curious fetish for rat humping. Add to that mixture lonely Okata, an elderly Japanese printmaker, who cares for beautiful vampire Jody when the sun nearly turns her to crispy bacon bits, and she returns the favor in a wonderful way. The Emperor and The Gentlemen, essentially, are a bum and his dogs. The Emperor considers himself an omniscient entity within the hood, whose reign means knowing every nook and cranny, thereby making him the most worthy asset to any local investigation. The list of great characters goes on and on.
Abby and company spend most of their time fighting Chet, a giant, shaved vampire cat (whose size and intelligence increases dramatically throughout the course of the book) and all his bloodsucking feline minions. They also spend a lot of time arguing with dimwitted cops and dealing with two vampiric souls in love, Countess Jody and Tommy Flood. Vampires in this world (or at least, in this case, San Francisco) have the ability to mist once they’ve evolved to a more mature level of vampirism, and can then join other vamps as one misty entity, moving and thinking as one. Insert countless bouts of hilarity in just about every other sentence, and you’ve got yourself a dandy of a book.
Completely hilarious and filled with highly inventive wordplay, Bite Me lends a quick, entertaining read. Author Moore can stretch his imagination farther than the tautest of gum. That’s pretty far. Consider this reviewer newly addicted to his wildly descriptive and surprisingly witty prose. This book is not one to miss, and I’m off to scout out some more Moore!
