MinDonner Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 Holy lutefisk!I think this is my favourite bit of the book so far, and will endeavour to use this expression more in real life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 I think this is my favourite bit of the book so far, and will endeavour to use this expression more in real life.I agree. "Holy Lutefisk" is too good to be discarded.A technicality here: "viking" can actually be used to describe the trips vikings did too, so that bit is actually factually correct! The rest...well, I did like the snaking fjords. And the cave with the mung covered assistants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 Leave the motherland outta this. ;-)Perhaps India will end up being the one global region that doesn't get this book's dubious spotlight turned on it. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rorshach Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 As a norwegian, I will not condone the use of "holy lutefisk". It is, indeed, unholy. To quote one of our wise men: "Lutefisk is fish which has been tortured for such a long time it's still shaking when it's served". Clearly this Jasper-persons doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 Finally, we meet our herione!Alex is a journalist for the terribly respectable sounding DC based World Gazette Magazine. She gets a new assignment from her boss, Ben. Will it send her our of town? “Damn straight it will.” Ben’s ruddy face grew ruddier. We can only hope Ben always behaves like a character in a bad cop show, thus broadening the genre mix of this book that much further. Really, i'll be very disappointed if he doesn't. I expect him to pound his table and demand she give him her badge press pass any moment.“Alex, you’ve wallowed long enough"....Alex’s husband, Brian, a DEA lawyer, and her five-year-old daughter, Linda, had been kidnapped and killed by a Mexican drug cartel two years ago.Ah, wallowing indeed. It's been two years and the trial is about to start. Why isn't she back being "one of the best reporters he knows" already?“I am right. Dammit, you were nominated for a Pulitzer five years ago for that piece you did on Bin Laden’sdaughter. You can’t rest on your laurels forever, honey.”He does always talk like that! Excellent!Anyway, we find out Alex is going some Dark Places. She's bought a gun and everything, she has been Planning Something. Oh...and her informants tell her the Mexican Cartelists might well get off on technicalities...hmmm.Would you believe, her assignment sends her to, that's right, Pennsylvania, to investigate some nut who thinks he's a vampire and just bought the town castle!The last few months Ben and his wife, Gloria, had tried to fix her up with dates, which she’d declined. But this was ludicrous.“You want me to make a love connection with a vampire?”“Stranger things have happened.”Little did she know then how prophetic that statement was to be.WHO'S POV IS THE LAST LINE FROM?!? Creepy.Hurrah, we are done with chapter 1! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 "Stranger things have happened" is not exactly a prophetic statement in this context, so much as a facepalmingly obvious one. You mean, stranger things like God creating Vikings out of snaky fjords to be uberhawt fighters'n'lovers (yet strictly vanilla!) who travel through time and battle mung-covered Lucipires? Yeah, that's a bit stranger. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 Alex rides into Transylvania, Pensylvania. The own is apparently fighting it's fate in the rust belt with the dubious sounding, but seemingly wildly successful plan: they've turned themselves into a mecca of cheesy vampire tourism. Thus providing a convenient hiding place for the read vampires. Alex checks into the only available hotel room in town, at the "Blood & Breakfast," where she meets her...ex-Amish proprietoress. “Wonderful good sunshine you get in this room, but you daresent open the windows. Ach, but the smells from the pigsty!”What a relief, I don't know what I would have done without the folksy ethnic older woman. They talk about losing children, and it is hinted that, why...Alex might be an atheist!Alex wanders through town, which is filled with references to other vampire novels/shows, (and...Groundhog Day, I think?) and into a cafe. Striking up a conversation with the waitress... Pointing to Alex’s netbook, she asked, “You a reporter or something?”Netbooks in cafes, rare indeed. Alex heads up to the castle to her interview, and the...vampire with the clipboard won't let her in. She sneaks inside by hitching a ride with a different vampire who is dressed like Michael Jackson in Thriller. Cause why not. Then she runs into Vikar, and we get a classically absurd romance novel description. You guys don't want to hear it, i'm sure. Back to the plot!Vikar is really dismissive - He calls her wench! She says he looks like "a silly viking"! He says "is that so"! - and had no intention of doing the interview which was arranged by Angel Mike behind his back. He's about to send her off when he notices what she thought was a mosquito bite she got during the night...]Sparks erupted where he touched her skin, and they slingshotted throughout her body. She was immediately aroused. “You have two marks on your neck.”OMG, he's a Viking Vampire Angel Construction Worker Transformer! How will they ever consummate their love if he tasers her everytime they touch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lummel Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 What's with that background for the heroine? What kind of novel does this intend to be? Crime fightin' romancin' time travelin' vampirin' revenge story on supernatural and mortal planes of existence? Surely stranger things could only happen if the novel now transmutes in to a delicate pavane on the impact of the playing style on the lives of the faroe islanders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 This is turning into the romance version of Axe Cop. Now just waiting for Sockarang to turn up and a vampire who can shoot avocados from his fingers. Plus a bizarre Michael Jackson subplot? Did Sandra Hill stop paying attention to pop culture in circa 1988? Or maybe the time-travelling is really real? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lummel Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 ...Vikar is really dismissive - He calls her wench! She says he looks like "a silly viking"! He says "is that so"! - and had no intention of doing the interview which was arranged by Angel Mike behind his back. He's about to send her off when he notices what she thought was a mosquito bite she got during the night...So God is trying to improve his image by using time travelling vampire navy seal ditch digging cowboy vikings as the front men in his PR campaign?OMG, he's a Viking Vampire Angel Construction Worker Transformer! How will they ever consummate their love if he tasers her everytime they touch?He certainly could be in trouble if his battery runs flat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 Vampire Viking Michael Jackson is mentioned earlier, when they discuss a new, 16 year old Vangel from Iceland who is obsessed with Thriller. It's also hinter he was a serial killer before getting recruited, just to keep the wildly fluctuating level of darkness of the book getting its usual manic depressive exercise. Are you suggesting he's actually Michael Jackson? I like that theory better. BTW, you guys really don't want to hear Alex's first impression of Vikar? We get lots more interesting info about his hair. You'd think, how much more could there possibly be to say...but you'd be wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MinDonner Posted November 6, 2012 Share Posted November 6, 2012 BTW, you guys really don't want to hear Alex's first impression of Vikar? We get lots more interesting info about his hair. You'd think, how much more could there possibly be to say...but you'd be wrong.Of course we do! Figured you were just teasing, you minx ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 6, 2012 Author Share Posted November 6, 2012 Standing before her was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, and the oddest. Early thirties, she would guess. He had long, dirty blond hair down to his shoulder blades, with pencil thin braids framing each side of his face. The braids were intertwined with turquoise beads. He had beautiful blue eyes and almost perfect facial features. She was tall, five-nine, but he had to be six-foot-four. And what a body! Aw, Vikar has the soul of a thirteen year old girl...turquoise beads! Oh, and he's dressed like a surfer. Cause he's laid back like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 7, 2012 Author Share Posted November 7, 2012 “Welcome to Hotel Transylvania, my dear.”And thus her nightmare began.Vikar drags Alex inside, where things are weird. Theres hymns playing and people dressed as Mississippi riverboat gamblers. Possibly for Alex, nightmares often feature 80's music videos and this double whammy of Thriller and Karma Chameleon is more than she knows what to do with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maithanet Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 Vikar drags Alex inside, where things are weird. Theres hymns playing and people dressed as Mississippi riverboat gamblers. Possibly for Alex, nightmares often feature 80's music videos and this double whammy of Thriller and Karma Chameleon is more than she knows what to do with.Monster/Beauty dichotomy? Wierd religious subtext no one understands? This sounds familiar...Vikar would do anything for love, but he won't do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galactus Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 I should tell you that Hardanger fiddle lead me to the key harp, which lead me to a series of videos of a bunch of japanese people playing swedish folk-music...Youtube is weird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaldanya Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 This is brilliant! It's better than the one time travelling SEAL Viking book by Sandra Hill that the X's gave me for my 30th. Have we had the description of the heroine when she stands in front of a mirror and assesses herself (inevitably she thinks she's a bit of a munter but she's obviously stunning)?N Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Datepalm Posted November 7, 2012 Author Share Posted November 7, 2012 We have, in fact, had no description of the heroine at all at this point! All we know is that she wears a 'black silk pantsuit' to take a stroll through a small Pensylvania town and to go interview a local eccentric hotel renovator, and that she turned heads at the Hotel Transylvania. To be fair, a black silk pantsuit probably doesn't stand out all that much among the riverboat gamblers, vikings and gladiators. Back to it - my battery gave out mid last post. Apologies! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lummel Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 I should tell you that Hardanger fiddle lead me to the key harp, which lead me to a series of videos of a bunch of japanese people playing swedish folk-music...Youtube is weird.**whistles** well I'm not going to take responsibility for all that!"dirty blond hair down to his shoulder blades"is this a colour or does it just mean that vikar the viking doesn't wash his hair? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacuna Posted November 7, 2012 Share Posted November 7, 2012 :shocked: and :thumbsup:. Carry on.Edit: The plot so far reminds me of Eddie Izzard skit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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