Cannonball Read Entry #20: Bite Me - Christopher Moore

I'm sure this might come as a surprise, but Christopher Moore is my favourite authour. Seriously. Considering that so far I've pretty much raked all of his books across the coals, this make shit sense, but as we all know, my love is a toxic, deadly thing that brings nothing but pain and woe...Or some shit like that.

The thing is, I could just sit idly by and pretend that his books are completely free of fault and perfect in every way, but that's not how it works. My outlook on books, and my outlook on pretty much anything, is that if you can acknowledge it's faults and still honestly say that you enjoyed it and would read it again, that's the sign of a good book. The worst thing you can do is to pretend that everything is fine when it's not; that leads goddamn nowhere.

Anyway, onto the book: Bite Me is the third installment of Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends trilogy. To catch you up, *SPOILER ALERT* the book takes off after the events of You Suck; Jody and Tommy are trapped together in a bronze statue (don't ask), Elijah, the first vampire, is on a boat with the three vamps he first turned, Abby and Foo are still fucking, and Chet the Huge Shaved Cat is now Chet the Huge Shaved Vampire Cat thanks to Elijah, and he's going around inadvertently creating an army of blood-sucking cats.

So there's that.

Anyway, Abby is now tasked with defending the city against the legion of undead felines along with Foo, Rivera and Cavuto, The Animals and The Emperor of San Francisco. Believe me, this makes far more sense in context. Unfortunately, there's a bit of a hitch in the plan when it's discovered that the human vampire blood in Chet is mutating him into a pseudo-sentient being, the three vamps from the boat decide to kill off the protagonists, and Jody and Tommy are freed from their statue, only to discover that Tommy has gone shithouserat crazy.

Now, the good parts: Moore still has the knack for making the absolutely fantastical seem natural, weaving even the most ridiculous detail into the plot so that nothing ever sticks out as being too weird. And as much as Abby annoyed me in the original, Moore manages to revolve a decent amount of the story around her without it ever being irritating.

The one thing that sort of irked me about the whole thing? Part of me felt that, on it's own, the book was good, but ultimately felt like an unnecessary to the series. Not bad, just unnecessary. I always kinda thought You Suck tied up the loose ends of Bloodsucking Fiends rather nicely, but apparently not. Thankfully, Bite Me leaves nothing unfinished, and I have to commend Moore for leaving us with a bittersweet ending that wraps things up completely.

When it comes down to it, it's still a great book, just like the rest of Moore's bibliography. It might not be perfect, but nothing is, so why get hung up on a few minute details when you can just appreciate something for what it is rather than what you want it to be? And all in all, it's still better than anything Stephanie Meyers can ever come up with.