The Works of L J Smith

[jennenen]

I'm bumping this up because I saw L.J. Smith wrote a new Vampire Diaries book. Then I read it and it was like bad fan fiction...I was so sad. Has anyone else seen this "masterpiece" yet?

[incognito]

Jul 12, 2009 8:36:32 GMT -4 jennenen said:

I'm bumping this up because I saw L.J. Smith wrote a new Vampire Diaries book. Then I read it and it was like bad fan fiction...I was so sad. Has anyone else seen this "masterpiece" yet?

I haven't read the new book, but to be honest her old books aren't very good at all IMO, from a literary perspective. So I don't think her new book being bad is such a huge departure.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy her books -- The Secret Circle is a total guilty pleasure. I just want to say that, even though I'm definitely not one of those people who feels the need to slash everything (you know, the people who are all, "ew, het...slash couples are so much better!"), I found much more chemistry between Diana and Cassie than I did between Cassie and Adam.

[bitca]

Jul 12, 2009 8:36:32 GMT -4 jennenen said:

I'm bumping this up because I saw L.J. Smith wrote a new Vampire Diaries book. Then I read it and it was like bad fan fiction...I was so sad. Has anyone else seen this "masterpiece" yet?

Oh. Wow. I just looked at some of the pages on Amazon. It really does look like bad FF. It was probably banged out in a night to jump on the Twilight train. Ech.

[jennenen]

Oh I'm not saying the original books were ever literary masterpieces, however this new one was painful to read. It just felt like a twelve year old girl watched too much anime and wrote a story using the same names.

[bitca]

The original books were fun YA reads, though. The new one looks like complete dreck and completely unnecessary.

[greenjeans]

So am I the only nerd who read the Nightworld series? I was expecting the final book to be out this month, only to find out from Amazon that it's delayed again until April 2011. What the frick? I know the writing isn't the best, but when I start a series I want to finish it, dammit! I want a resolution. Ten years for a follow up?

[Deleted]

Ok, because I'm a fan of the Vampire Diaries TV show I picked up a copy of the first book in the library. I've just started reading it and OMG! I had no idea it wasn't a modern story and that it was written 20 years ago, in the era of YA Girl's fiction that was my own! It's something that's obvious from the first few pages - the style of those books are so different from YA fiction today. Everybody looks like a model, of course and talks like they're 30 and characters on Dynasty. It's like coming home again!

I'm really curious about what changes have been made to make the books seem up-to-date. Obvious ones are the Twilight-esque cover and the fact that 2 books have been combined as one. (Modern YA books are a lot more substantial nowadays. Remember when they used to be about 150 pages long?) There's a reference to Caroline being as flawless as a Vogue model and I wonder if it used to be a Seventeen model instead or something.

[bitca]

I don't think they actually made any changes, just combined two books into one. I thumbed through them at B&N a couple months ago. Looked the same to me. Caroline was always supposed to be OTT sophisticated and gorgeous, or whatever, so the Vogue reference sounds accurate.

What's weird is The Vampire Diaries was at first a trilogy. Then the fourth and totally unnecessary book came out. Now there's the fifth. Wonder if they're going to add on another one in ten years.

[crivens]

I'm still waiting for the last Nightworld book to come out. It's been like 10 years, hasn't it? Time to get that sucker to the printer!

[Deleted]

The new TV series based on The Secret Circle starts this week, so in anticipation, I read the trilogy for the first time. There is an entertaining story buried underneath the atrocious writing. I liked the history between their parents and the idea of an evil mastermind planning the birth of all these creepy, supernatural children.

But the writing. Gee, did you realise Diana has hair like sunlight and moonlight woven together and Faye has hooded golden eyes? Because L. J. Smith might have mentioned it once or 200 times.

Jul 12, 2009 15:20:08 GMT -4 incognito said:

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy her books -- The Secret Circle is a total guilty pleasure. I just want to say that, even though I'm definitely not one of those people who feels the need to slash everything (you know, the people who are all, "ew, het...slash couples are so much better!"), I found much more chemistry between Diana and Cassie than I did between Cassie and Adam.

Oh yeah, Cassie's crush on Diana is pretty easy to pick up on, what with Cassie going on about Diana's beauty and goodness and how she loves her more than anything. There's even a part where Cassie's singing Diana's praises once again and talks about her whole body, including her "well made legs" or something. I think it stopped being just subtext right there.

And Deborah was clearly gay, but Smith seemed to avoid coming right out and saying it. Not sure why; I remember that somebody came out in Sweet Valley High, so it was OK to do that in a YA book back then.