Paranormal has always been my first and one true love. I started out reading paranormal when I first picked up an Anne Rice book and I haven’t really looked back since. I’ve gone through all different stages of reading the paranormal going from horror to urban fantasy and slowly making my way to paranormal romance.
And then recently, as in the past year, I’ve seen a switch happen. Humans are suddenly taken a more dominant role in my reading preferences. I don’t think I can pinpoint the time but I know I’ve made an unconscious decision to let the non-fangy-or-furry characters take up my time. Granted, I still have my go-to series that I absolutely cannot wait to read the next book that comes out. I have my tried and true authors I will drop anything to dive into. But I am not as open to giving a new paranormal author a try. It feels as if, after such a long time and countless books, I am more demanding for original storylines.
I don’t want to read yet another vampire book. Now it has to give me something new, the author has to surprise me! Try mixing up species and creating conflict that isn’t just the plain group of good vampires vs the bad guys and oh yeah, the emo alpha hero is brooding, kicking and screaming that he doesn’t want a mate but there she is.
I blame, in a way, the media. Yes, I am referring to Twilight and True Blood and the likes. Sadly paranormal characters are less Lestat and Buffy and more sparkly emo. What ever happened to the dark and gritty stories that I fell in love with? It seems they are more of a joke now and harder to find. Some authors are still going strong with series that I love reading and others should’ve ended them when they were ahead.
But I know there’s still a lot of great paranormal books out there that I haven’t read and quite frankly I miss reading them! So it’s now time to switch back to my paranormal love and dive in!
I am still a huge paranormal fan, but I think its because I don’t limit myself to just paranormal. I still enjoy historicals, contemporaries, sci-fi, suspense, dystopian… well, you get the idea. I’ve recently become enamored with blending the genres for something new like paranormal steampunk or dystopian suspense, etc.
Yes I still like paranormal romance but then I like all romance. I like to switch it up and make reading interesting.
I love paranormal romance, it has always been my fave genre of romance but I’ve noticed in the past couple of years it has kinda taken a backseat to all other romance genres.
It still is my fave and I’ll work on reading more of it.
i love paranormal as well though i get what you are saying. i don’t want to read the same characters over and over again, but i feel like that is true even for my contemp reads. it is hard i think to be original sometimes when they are such expectations about vampires/wherewolves or whatnot. but i will keep reading because the ones that are good are really, really good.
I still read paranormal, but I am finding that the series that I have loved have begun to bore me. I am loyal to Vampires and Werewolves. I don’t need for a book to change up the legends, I would just like original characters that keep me interested. I am tired of all of the copy-cats. Like so and so but not very well written. I am worried that with so many Vamp books out there that a reader gets burned out on the poor writing and editing. So they take a break from the genre.
I also want to say (climbing on my soapbox) – as a fan of paranormal, I am so tired of having a huge portion of a book either retelling the legend or bringing me up to speed on the series. I recently read a book and I didn’t realize that it was book 3 or a series, out of 240ish pages, 65 pages was catching me up. Most of that info had to do with other characters and I really think I could have made it through the story fine without. This was from a N.Y. house so it was edited by professionals.
I don’t need a new skill like now vamps can walk in the light, garlic, mirrors everything works….I just want great characters and a strong plot. I know what I am getting into with Vamps.
Have a great weekend everybody- and wear your cross or carry your holy water!
Great points Barb. I think if the characters and the storyline are original, it doesn’t matter that the legends are still the same. We fell in love with those anyway. But we also need the characters to drive the story. I still have love for my main series but I do have a few that I feel have started to drag.