5/9/24 12:26pm
the book poll results are in and
well. you see. it's a 3-way tie lol. between Blood Price, The Deep, and I'm in Love with Mothman. which means i'm going to consult the spinny wheel, whose decision will be binding.
the spinny wheel says...
blood price!
so that's what i'll start with. and when it's done we'll consult the spinny wheel once more, unless someone wants to chime in to make a case for their pick.
Vicky Nelson is a private investigator. She used to be one heck of a murder detective for the Toronto police, but deteriorating eyesight and her stubborn-ness led her to leave her true calling.
A killer is stalking Toronto and the first victim's girlfriend hired Vicky to find the killer, since she doesn't believe the police are looking in the right places. Vicky's ex-partner (and ex-lover) Mike Celluci is in charge of the investigation and does not appreciate her "help".
A chance encounter pairs Vicky with Henry FitzRoy--Romance Writer, Vampire and bastard son of Henry VIII as they hunt what appears, despite the impossiblity, to be a demon.
for those that don't know, this is the book series that the lifetime show Blood Ties was based on. i started watching it on tubi recently, and the show is mostly fun so why not try the books lol
tag is #bats reads blood price
5/9/24 12:44pm
so a good chunk of my commentary is probably gonna be focused on what got changed for the show because that's the kind of thing i find fascinating.
the show is pretty faithful to this beginning part here, with coreen's boyfriend getting killed and vicki witnessing it, except here in the book this involves vicki jumping in front of a train
5/9/24 12:59pm
the book is more upfront with vicki & mike's romantic history and their dynamic is still pretty similar. side note i wonder if book!mike is gonna get on my nerves as much as show!mike lol
5/9/24 1:09pm
damn not even to chapter 2 yet and we've got two more bodies. if i remember correctly in the show is was like 5 or so to make a pentagram i think? so either they toned down the amount of deaths for the show or the pacing of this book is about to get real weird lol
5/9/24 1:28pm
yonge and bloor do not sound like real street names to me lol
5/9/24 1:36pm
He liked Greg; in this world of equality and democracy it was good to meet a man willing to serve. The attitude reminded him of the men who'd worked on the estate when he was a boy and took him back, for a little while at least, to a simpler time.
sooo henry's a bit of a dick
5/9/24 1:37pm
an interesting change; here it implies that henry has never turned anyone else into a vampire yet, but in the show he's made several
5/9/24 1:54pm
is book!norman actually less of a dick? so far he seems actually upset at the deaths, whereas show!norman was pretty chill with killing people.
also they changed his last name. in the book it's birdwell but imdb lists it as bridewell in the show
5/9/24 2:09pm
as i mentioned in the poll, in the book henry's a romance author instead of a graphic novelist, a particularly odd change given that this was a show on lifetime in 2007. and it's not really like they were trying to gritty it up i don't think; compared to similar shows i've seen in the genre it's more romance-heavy which fits with the network.
maybe they had to change it to give mike something remotely resembling a fighting chance in the love triangle lol
5/9/24 3:54pm
norman's still a dick. just a slightly different flavor of dick
5/9/24 4:03pm
"Well, if you two are going to engage in such rampant heterosexuality, in my house yet, I'm going."
5/9/24 4:19pm
you know what i think i like the way the book portrays norman more. like he's definitely an entitled incel creep in both but these extra little glimpses we get into his psychology & how he progressively gets worse are good.
and this book came out in '91. the ways it's aged and the ways it's held up are both fascinating and sad
5/9/24 4:26pm
here she is my girl coreen!!!
vicki didn't specifically mention her being goth so that might have been a change the show made, if so great job 10/10
5/9/24 4:42pm
something to note is, there are multiple background queer (or somewhat implied to be) people at this point, and i'm struggling to figure out how the book feels about that yet.
so we have alex (source of the quote i posted earlier), who was implied to have maybe been joking?; coreen's dad, who ran off with his male secretary; and the character in henry's romance novel who is relieved he doesn't have to confront his feelings when the guy he had the hots for is revealed to be a girl in disguise.
on one hand if these are meant to be jokes that's shitty, and this is a book from the early '90s so it wouldn't surprise me, but on the other hand i did hear somewhere that there were a lot of queer characters in huff's books, so like it's possible it's just that there are many queer people here and some of them happen to be side characters. also the book just doesn't read as that funny to me? like that doesn't come across as the tone it's going for, so these being jokes would feel a bit out of place? i don't think i can make a call on it until i've read the whole thing.
5/9/24 4:47pm
5/9/24 4:42pm
something to note is, there are multiple background queer (or somewhat implied to be) people at this point, and i'm struggling to figure out how the book feels about that yet.
so we have alex (source of the quote i posted earlier), who was implied to have maybe been joking?; coreen's dad, who ran off with his male secretary; and the character in henry's romance novel who is relieved he doesn't have to confront his feelings when the guy he had the hots for is revealed to be a girl in disguise.
on one hand if these are meant to be jokes that's shitty, and this is a book from the early '90s so it wouldn't surprise me, but on the other hand i did hear somewhere that there were a lot of queer characters in huff's books, so like it's possible it's just that there are many queer people here and some of them happen to be side characters. also the book just doesn't read as that funny to me? like that doesn't come across as the tone it's going for, so these being jokes would feel a bit out of place? i don't think i can make a call on it until i've read the whole thing.
nevermind i just looked the author up on wikipedia and she is One Of Us 🌈
5/9/24 11:20pm
if vicki was subscribed to dracula daily she wouldn't have this problem
5/9/24 11:46pm
so they dialed down the violence for the show, got it 👍 we're already at body #5 and vicki's plotted out the deaths on a map and we aren't at a pentagram
5/9/24 11:58pm
another thing i like that the book does is show more of how vicki's condition affects her daily life. in the show it feels like they end up ignoring it sometimes, outside of vicki wearing glasses. like we're told she has really bad night vision but i feel like it isn't shown much, or at least it isn't conveyed well. and yeah vision problems in someone who generally can still see well enough can be hard to convey in a visual medium vs a book but idk.
5/12/24 1:41pm
so i went back and watched the first episode of blood ties last night, here are some changes i missed during the read:
- corine's last name was changed from fergus to fennel
- in the book corine went to vicki because she was the only female private investigator she could find, not because she was the one who was at one of the crime scenes
- henry's building guy as made younger
- celluci is somewhat more inclined to share case data in the show vs the book
- they added the occult symbol left at once of the crime scenes; it's possible this could come up later but it's bare minimum part of the shift in time line
- along with henry remembering said occult symbol. so far in the book the main demonic connection henry has is he met the guy who wrote faust and he smelled all demony (but again this may come up later in the book
- the coroner is different. in the book the coroner is kind of a dick, but the show coroner is a fun lady
- the dudes norman meets at the bar are two jocks he's trying to impress in the book
- the witness saw one big bat in the book vs. several small bats
- in the book henry and vicki's paths do not cross at all until he kidnaps her
- if henry met the demon at the crime scene i haven't gotten to that part yet, but i'm willing to bet he didn't
there's probably more that slipped by me, or were just really minor, or wouldn't occur to me to note until i got further in or rewatched the second episode (as it was a 2-parter)
5/14/24 10:36pm
And it's quite an attractive skull, too, he noted, taking a closer look. Although there's a definite hint of obstinacy about the width of that jaw.
tragedy: book!henry's into phrenology
5/14/24 10:36pm
She wore no makeup, he approved of that
fuck offff henry
5/14/24 10:41pm
so henry did see the demon at the crime scene. not an all-out fight like in the show, but he did see the demon
5/14/24 11:56pm
in the book they're not trying to make a pentagram; they're trying to make a specific symbol representing a demon's name. explains a bit why there are so many more bodies in the book
5/15/24 12:05am
we still have norman getting coreen to his apartment, but it works out a little differently and it feels like the timeline's been moved up a bit. also he doesn't kidnap her, he just convinces her to go and they go in her car
5/15/24 12:11am
so she thinks he's the vampire's renfield for a minute & pokes around. he ends up telling her about the demon thing and when she doesn't take him seriously he gets aggressive. she fights him off and leaves
5/15/24 12:27am
that one police supervisor lady isn't in the book. instead there's a police sargent who's generally kind of okay with helping vicky out
5/16/24 2:20am
if i'm reading this right, we have canon bi henry! 🎉🎉 yay gay people! 🎉🎉
5/16/24 2:28am
book!norman is explicitly racist, and now has an ak
5/16/24 2:33am
the two asshole jocks just like? kill a woman? just straight up kill a lady? they beat her to death because they think she's a vampire? holy shit
5/16/24 1:25pm
so norman was about to summon the demon, but over in a church henry prayed really hard and the demon couldn't come
5/16/24 3:32pm
why is vicki so uptight about college kid speech patterns? first of all like, she's not even complaining about weird slang, it's just people saying "goes" instead of "says," secondly she's like. 30. which feels both too old and too young to be bothered about something this petty
5/16/24 3:48pm
in the book it seems dr. segara is just a professor. she doesn't seem to know henry personally, and she makes a brief comment that implies she doesn't know he's a vampire, but she has met him. he donated a lot of books to the rare book room she works, which is why when norman visits her looking for a grimoire to summon a demon lord she refers him to henry. dun dun dunnnn
5/16/24 3:54pm
originally greg doesn't think henry is a vampire, the daytime doorguy (named tim) suggests it. greg shrugs it off and says he's not a vampire, just a writer.
however, he does think about it for a bit after remembering the night henry went off about seeing the vampire story in the paper
5/16/24 4:06pm
ohhh okay here's where we get o'mara and the culty stuff
5/16/24 4:19pm
"Blood. Blood! BLOOD! BLOOD!"
and bits of sick
5/16/24 4:27pm
henry was first brought into o'mara's cult by his boyfriend alfred. he catches on that o'mara knows what he is & leaves, but comes back later to try and kill o'mara. o'mara tries to summon a demon that will make henry turn him into a vampire, but henry kills him before he can pull off the summoning. there's no mention of astaroth
5/16/24 4:37pm
😰 pubby no 😭
5/16/24 10:27pm
bit of a long one since i read a chunk while i was out:
so norman sent the demon to steal the grimoire from henry. had the big demon fight there instead of with the skater dudes. he gets hurt & vicki gives him blood like the show, but vicki also calls up tony to get him more blood because just hers isn't enough. i don't think i've mentioned tony before, but he's vicki's go-to "word on the street" guy. so he also gives henry blood and now knows he's a vampire, but he's chill about it.
when the demon left with the grimoire it was injured, so it went out to kill & it ended up klling henry's neighbor who was out for a walk. this is what leads to the scene from the show where the doorman shows up to henry's apartment with a stake and vicki provides an alibi.
side note, i love all these little details that the show pulled directly or almost directly from the book. it's charming to see an adaptation stick to its source material. of course it would have been even more charming if the show had bothered to include any of the queer content 😒
at home, vicki gets a call from coreen, who'd been out of town for a bit, and finally ends up mentioning norman and the whole demon thing, so now vicki's got a lead and they plan to meet up later so coreen can take her to norman's apartment
5/16/24 10:34pm
i like that coreen has more agency in the book, even if she uses that agency to do dumb things
5/16/24 10:38pm
goddammit mike
5/16/24 11:12pm
of course we're bringing up roleplaying games! can't have a '90s book about demons without mentioning roleplaying games lol
5/16/24 11:30pm
holy shit the demon lord summoning actually happened???
5/16/24 11:44pm
okay so the summoning doesn't fully work. vicki has to die for the spell to be fully complete but she doesn't die. norman gets sucked into the pentagram and dies (maybe. we know how that worked out in the show lol). the gang ultimately bargains with the demon lord, giving them the grimoire in exchange for them going back to hell and not using the grimoire on people. vicki in hospital, still alive, the end.
sad that my girl coreen is not going to be a recurring character :( henry did his mind thingy to make her forget the demon stuff
5/16/24 11:52pm
so the book was really good! had some issues but overall a good time. better than the show. except for coreen. woe to my goth blorbo T_T
so, one of the later books in the series is blood bank, which is a collection of short stories about the characters of the vicki nelson novels. it also apparently includes some thoughts the author had about working on the show. i'm very interested to hear what she has to say about it, especially given how straight the show is
