Staked
Jeremy F Lewis
Pocket Books
6/10
Staked kind of reads like Harry Potter for grown-ups, which is to say it involves magic, adventure, and the supernatural- but with lots of sex and violence thrown in. It’s definitely not the most intelligent thing I’ve ever read, but it kept my attention the whole time, and once I started reading, I couldn’t really stop. It wasn’t that the plot was that clever, it was more that it was easy to read (great for those with a smaller vocabulary) and the plot moved fast. I’m not gonna lie, I sort of liked it. But who doesn’t like stories about undead strip clubs?
Staked is told from two first-person perspectives- Eric, the self-proclaimed “super vampire,” and Tabitha, his newly-turned vampire girlfriend. Eric is somewhat of an asshole, which makes it hard to root for him. The parts of the story that revolve around him generally involve him battling with his conscience and losing (this includes many moral dilemmas involving sex, the trickiest kind). At least he has a conscience, right? Tabitha is vain and vaguely stupid with undying (heh heh, I made a funny) affection for Eric. Basically she’s your typical stripper-turned-heroine. Enough said.
The story involves your classic werewolves versus vampires, modernized to fit present day. Basically, Eric, the vampire owner of a strip club, is framed as the killer of a chief werewolf’s son. Mayhem ensues. All of his friends get involved, and along the way, he turns his girlfriend into a vampire, screws her sister (multiple times), turns into a superbeast, and discovers that maybe he has a heart after all. How touching. On the flip side is his girlfriend, who decides to prove that she’s not just some dumb stripper girlfriend, and along the way screws Eric’s head henchman, kills his best friend’s girl, and ultimately decides that Eric has to prove himself to her. Woot woot. Oh, and either the end is paving the way for some sort of epic sequel, or that was the most open-ended crap ending I have ever read. Way to not resolve anything.