YOU SUCK: A Love Story
Christopher Moore
William Morrow
Fiction
ISBN-10: 0060590297
ISBN-13: 9780060590291

Nineteen-year-old Thomas C. Flood has just woken up and discovered that his girlfriend, Jody, has turned him into a vampire. He's not thrilled with the situation. No more tacos because solid food makes you violently sick. No more sunlight because, well, you get dusted. No more friends because they are actually vampire hunters and will no doubt want to kill you. And, perhaps the biggest downside, no more coffee because any liquid other than blood makes you vomit.

Being a vampire, while it seems easy in the movies, isn't so simple. Attacking a human is kind of creepy and frightening at first. Tommy thinks it's best to practice on other things, just to try it out and get used to the idea of being a predator. When Tommy attempts to practice satiating his bloodlust on a cat, the results are far from the romantic vision we've come to expect. Some things are more primal, like the need for coffee. Tommy and Jody buy a cup of java just to smell it. They miss it. When Tommy discovers that if you add blood to coffee it becomes consumable, Jody becomes much easier to live with.

Tommy and Jody must move, and soon. Tommy's friends, known as the Animals, had once helped human Tommy bronze a savage vampire, trapping him forever. Jody had promised to leave town in exchange for her life. Now that Tommy is one of the creatures of the night, however, the Animals and a duo of local cops prepare to hunt Tommy and Jody down and do away with him. Things of course never go as planned, and another wrinkle is added: Elijah Ben Sapir, the Vampire Lord, is out of his bronze prison and seeks vengeance.

Along the way we are exposed to a young goth girl, Abby Normal (get it?), who wants to be a minion for Tommy; a call girl from Vegas whose gimmick is to look like the members of the Blue Man Group; the Emperor of San Francisco, who feels responsible for those who walk the streets; Huge Cat Guy and his shaved cat, Chet, who wears a red sweater; and we get to experience the thrill that is frozen turkey bowling at the local Safeway.

YOU SUCK is a return to the story of Tommy and Jody that began with BLOODSUCKING FIENDS. Christopher Moore has a way of spinning a yarn that is so welcoming and inviting that it warms you up and makes you want to keep on going. It is a truly fun experience --- offbeat, witty and laugh-out-loud hilarious.

The characters he brings into his stories are so abnormal that they're normal, and we can relate to them or recognize them in other people we know. Then, he takes an incident or an event and exaggerates it to biblical proportions that somehow seem perfectly commonplace within his world. Open up YOU SUCK, or any Moore tome, and you open up an incredible cave of wonders, a veritable Land of Oz.

With frozen turkey bowling.

   --- Reviewed by Stephen Hubbard

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