This is the perfect book to read right before Halloween! Its scary, its creepy, its the type of book that would make a great movie. The special effects alone would be really interesting to check out.

The story is about four people in the town of Leppington, (which is supposed to be somewhere in England). The town was founded by a family of the same name, who had a dark and mysterious history. Once, the town was prosperous, and many people were employed at the local slaughterhouse that sits in the middle of town. By now, however, the town is past its prime, and no one there is happy to be there.
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A Million Little Orders.

Right now, this is the book everyone is asking about at the bookstore. (And no, we don’t have them in stock anymore, and no, neither do the other bookstores in your town). (But we can put you on a list to get one). Most of the mass of people who want this book simply seem to want it because Oprah mentioned it, and then had the author on her show. More than once in the past two weeks, I believe.

Now, I read this book some months ago, and I have to agree that is really is a great book. Its interesting, its scary, its something that actually happened to the author. However, it sort of bothers me that people aren’t reading it because of its attributes, but only because Oprah is saying its good. It is very strange to have several housewife looking women, (accompanied by their toddlers), and several grandmothers, and at the same time, several college students, (both men and women), suddenly have this burning desire to read a book about a guy’s experiences as he went through rehabilitation for drug addiction. Oprah definately has the magic touch when it comes to booksales.
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I picked up Planetfall because I needed a break from the books I had been reading, all of which were non-fiction and serious in nature. When I spotted this book at a used bookstore, I thought it was just the kind of mindless fix I needed. And when it comes down to it, all you can really call this book is “”mindless.”
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I think I would have liked this book more if I was 10 or 12 years old. I am pretty sure its from the Teen section, so, I guess that is to be expected. I think the last time I was interested in reading this sort of book was when I was a pre-teen, and thought all things teenage were cool beyond measure. This book is that sort of book. And, as far as being that sort of book, I think it will appeal girls of that age rather well. Especially now, right before Halloween, since this is sort of a Vampire book.

As with many of the books from the teen section, this book does not really fit into any specific genre. It has Vampires and witches, etc. etc., but its way too light to be a horror book. It has a love story, in a very tame Disney like way, but isn’t a romance book. There is a case to solve, but its not exactly a mystery book either. Its a mix.

Francesca is a high school sophmore, who isn’t attending school. Instead, shes living with her mom, who happens to be a witch, and traveling with a Faire full of people who cast spells, read minds, raise demons, and do magic, both the “real kind” and the “slight of hand” kind. Fran wants more than anything else to be “Normal” and fit in, but its hard to do that when you are part of a traveling freak show. Its even harder to do when you have a special power like Fran does. Whenever she touches people, she gets some of their thoughts. She finds this mostly unpleasant. The Faire gets robbed a few times and Fran is the only one who can figure out who the real thief is, by using this special power. To add to her problems, she meets Ben, the cute brother of her best friend Imogen, both of whom happen to be Vampires. Ben thinks Fran is his Beloved, and Fran isn’t too sure what to do with that, since she just met him and really hasn’t had too many boyfriends yet. Most of what happens in this book as things get sorted out is kind of funny, instead of being dark and scary, as most Vampire books are. I think the book is safe for preteen girls to read, and that is exactly who will like it best.

This book is a collection of Vampire stories by 18 different authors, none of whom I have ever even heard of before. I think the editors anticipated Readers looking at the author list in the table of contents and saying: “Who?” because they felt the need to add little paragraphs about the authors immediately following each story. This was annoying to me. Other story collections I have read put the author information in the back of the book, where you can either look it up, or look at some of it, or, ignore it entirely if you want. With the author info immediately after the stories, it kind of comes across as a commericial break in between stories. Not something I wanted to look at, but, in my way anyway.

I was largely disapointed with this book. It feels like the editors went “Hey, everybody! Write me a vampire story for this collection! Let’s make some money!”, and most of the authors went. “Yes….well… I’ve actually been working on this totally different story. Perhaps I will just throw in a Vampire somewhere, and make it work anyway!”. The editors must have looked at what they got back from the authors, and thought, “Uh oh! A lot of these aren’t really about vampires much. I know! We will put them in chronological order! Then it will work!” And then they named the whole lot “Time of the Vampires”, thinking themselves rather clever, and called it a day. Only a few stories held my attention. Most of them I just dragged myself through, hoping they would suddenly improve. They didn’t improve.
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