Sunglasses After Dark is a horror novel. So anyone looking for romance and vampire sparklies should skip this book. The vampires are vicious asshats. The heroine is a killer, and there’s lots of violence and gore. There’s not a drop of UST. Okay maybe a little bit. LOL Did I like it? Yes and no. I really love Sonja Blue. She’s got a tragic backstory. The vampire who made her is nasty, and I think he is the main villain in the 2nd book (which makes me want to read it.) To survive, Sonja made money as a prostitute, and she’s unapologetic about it. Sonja is also a little crazy. She has a nasty demon inside her that likes to rip people (especially Neo Nazis) to shreds, and she can’t control it. The book starts with Sonja locked in the Danger Ward in an insane asylum, and her stay there was disruptive to say the least. I thought Sonja was a cool character. There are also some great scenes in this book. The part where Sonja gets changed into a vampire was brutal and visceral. I was moved when Sonja faces her family. The scene where Claude thinks Denise has come to make love to him was beautifully sad. And crazy Catherine Wheele’s backstory from podunk, Southern trash to rich and powerful evangelist was wildly entertaining.Collins has a love of tacky things and she describes them with zeal. Catherine doesn’t just wear a pantsuit, she wears a 'pink' pantsuit. Zebulon’s painting isn’t just a painting, its 'black velvet'. LOL"The walls were festooned with rubbish salvaged from the city dump and places even less savory. Baby doll heads were affixed to the walls by nails driven through their eyes. The front end of a ’58 Chevy jutted onto the dance floor, a moth-eaten moose head mounted in place of the hood ornament. Instead of glass eyes, golf balls graced the creature’s sockets; sawdust dribbled from its nostrils, while a used jockstrap dangled from its antlers. Loops of Christmas tree lights hung from the ceiling, none of them flashing in sequence."Collins love of dive bars and seedy places is a nice touch. The problem with the book though, I don’t think it’s very well written. The point of view jumps from third person to first, and then back again, which Collins uses to describe Sonja’s inner thoughts. But since the first person isn’t much different than the third person, and Sonja isn’t that deep, it didn’t really make any difference. There are tons of crummy metaphors and similes scattered everywhere. Descriptions were sometimes long, excessive, and pointless. The prose wasn't always clear, and I sometimes had to backtrack to figure out what the hell was going on. "While waiting for the bullet train that would take me into Tokyo from the airport, I noticed a young girl dressed in the drab uniform of the Nippon Educational system had copied from German private schools earlier in the century. She looked to be no more than twelve or thirteen, although the roundness of her face made her seem even younger.She was chewing gum and paging through a comic book the size of a telephone directory. I glimpsed a woman, naked except for strategic scars and tattoos. A poisonous snake with dripping fangs was wrapped around the monster’s erect penis; rather, it was wrapped around where the giant’s erect penis would have been, if the censors hadn’t airbrushed it out. The schoolgirl extruded a bubble the color of flesh, flipped the page, and continued reading. The giant pressed his thumbs into his protesting victims’ eyes. I realized that finding answers here would not be as easy I’d thought."I was like, huh? I had to read this twice, because I had no idea what Collin's was talking about. Why is Collins describing in detail the pictures of a graphic novel that some random commuter is reading on a train? This had nothing to do with the story. Is the penis-squeezing, snake woman supposed to be a symbol for Sonja? If so, I don’t care. Get on with the story already! It was annoying to be reading so much pointless crap. Collins dream sequences were confusing as well, and as with all dream sequences the action comes to a screeching halt. I get the feeling Collins was inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street, but she’s not smooth at conveying the multi layers of the psyche. I always think of Clive Barker who can describe wild, amazing stuff and you always know what’s going on. But Barker’s prose is gorgeous. That is not the case here. In conclusion, this book was a mixed bag. I’m still pondering if I want to read book 2. By the way, my copy is the 10th Anniversary Edition, which has some lovely fan art, which I adored. There was also a bitter introdution written by Collins in the beginning, complaining about how people have ripped her off and how success was a mixed blessing. I thought, wow, shouldn’t a 10th anniversary be a celebration?
Like the rest of the Western world, I am vamped out and picked this book because I didn't have other fiction handy over a holiday weekend. I really wasn't burning to read anything more about vampires indefinitely. But, I have liked Nancy Collins since I read her short story "Dancing Nitely" in the anthology Under the Fang and this book turned out to be clever and original and I loved the kickass heroine. Alas, vampires had to go and become culturally omnipresent but do bear in mind this book was written in the 90's when all vampires wanted to do with people was eat them. Not shag them and, God forbid, not mope over their tragic love for them. Kids, things were better then.This book is the first of a trilogy about Sonja Blue, a woman who was attacked by a vampire and left for dead in swinging 1960's London. Through a series of coincidences she lives and becomes a hybrid. And once she finally regains her memory, she is exceptionally pissed about the whole thing. So she travels the world killing vamps and other assorted predators while looking for her maker. Unfortunately there are things after her as well, including a creepy televangelist. Ok, ok I know, you're thinking are you sure this chick isn't named Blade and played by Wesley Snipes? But this book came out well before the movies and at any rate, Collins builds a uniquely imagined, well-crafted world that probably has something to say about feminine identity and violence toward women if you care to delve beneath the shiny layers of mythology and ass kickery. Or if you want to just revel in those top layers, that's fine too.I got this book as part of an omnibus version of the trilogy and most of it is dedicated to Sonja's backstory. I definitely will read the other two parts eventually. I have the feeling if the timing were different, I would have devoured these books back to back to back. (one of my male coworkers read the first Sookie Stackhouse book recently and complained that after an epic chain fight in the first chapter, it was all downhill. I wonder if I should have steered him this way instead.)
What do You think about Sunglasses After Dark (2000)?
If you're sick to death of the 'Twilight' approach to vampire literature, this book will cure that malaise pretty thoroughly. Be aware, though, that the violence and gore is quite graphic. Sonja Blue, the main character, formerly heiress Denise Johnson, became a vampire in 1969 as a result of a brutal attack by the so-called 'Sir Morgan,' a "Noble" level vampire, who left her for dead. In this case, a human being is transformed by become a host to a 'demon,' or as Sonja calls it, the Other. At the beginning of the story, she's being held captive in a high end mental institution, being pumped full of drugs to keep her under control. Unfortunately for those who kidnapped her, vampires can eventually build up an immunity to drugs of all kinds. She eventually breaks out and goes on the hunt for those who put her away.Most of the book is concerned with Sonja's back story - her awakening as a vampire, her post-human existence as a prostitute in Europe, her encounters with other supernatural beings and her quest to find Sir Morgan. The human population, in this book, doesn't see the Pretenders, the vampires, ogres, succubi and other supernatural creatures that live side by side with them all over the world. Sonja meets up with several such nasty characters, including Revenants, the most common types of vampires. Sonja's a tough character to like sometimes, but you do like her - she has a conscience, which makes living with the destructive (and malevolently sarcastic) Other extremely difficult. It's a constant battle to keep her bad side under control. Sonja's also a freak in a world of freaks. She is developing into a Noble vampire at an accelerated rate and appears to have very few of the typical vampire weaknesses. Ironically, she's also a self-styled vampire hunter, out for revenge on the monster who took her human life away. In short, she comes off as a sort of female "Blade" just without the messianic zeal for killing any and all of the undead.I meant to start reading this series some time ago. It's a quick read, as well as a compelling one. As I said earlier, the gross-out factor of some of the more descriptive violent scenes will probably be too disturbing for some readers. Still, I'm interested to see where Collins takes this character.
—Marty
I have been wanting to read this book for about seven years now, and I was very excited to start reading this book. The book starts out with Sonja Blue, our main character and vampire, locked in the danger ward in a mental institution. She is dream walking into the dreams of the other inmates and terrorizes the staff until she is strong enough to escape. The vampires Nancy A. Collins has created are really interesting and their history and background is well developed. Sonja Blue is very powerful and strong and I think it was nice how the vampires in this book has the ability to change their appearance and fingerprints. This also makes the plot feel more plausible. About half of the book is devoted to telling us the story of how Sonja Blue was created and how she ended up where the book starts up, so we get both the present time and the past parallel to each other. One of the things I liked best about this book is that it is free of forced romances and Sonja Blue is out for revenge, not a boyfriend.
—Katastrofekat
I like Sonja Blue as a protagonist of this series of books, but, personally I really like vampires who fit into our world, but that's just a personal gripe... However once you get into the book you do feel sorry for the way she is turned... And for the way she is used and abused by those she comes into contact with... In fact you can actually start to see her acts of violence as thoroughly deserved to the ones she dishes it out to... She is certainly someone you would want to have on your side...Another thing that takes time to get into is the "others" ogres, incubus/sucubus's etc... Ms Collins was the first to introduce a multi layered shadow world which other more recent authors now include in their series... By the end of the book you realise that despite her denials Sonja Blue has more humanity in her than she gives herself credit for... A good page turner, that can frustrate at times, but I for one will come back to this series time and time again when new ones pop up on Kindle, as I know she is currently working on turning all her back novels into ebooks...
—Michelle
