Hey! Book reccs! Always a good topic.
It’s tough for me to answer bc I think it depends on every individual reader’s sense of humor,… even within “humorous/ dark tone as VC” there is a range*. So I can’t say definitively that these reccs are in line with what you’re looking for necessarily, but you can use this list as a starting point.
*Lestat dancing w/ Claudia’s mom’s corpse: Some ppl find this moment dark and hilarious and other ppl think it’s just disgusting, so… there is a range. Personally I find it pretty amusing.
(There are some duplicates on this list, sorry about that, but I wanted to list them by recc’er.) (And I added ** next to those that @gothiccharmschool just recc’d in two recent posts which I will reblog momentarily for you.)
In no special order:
- (Okay this is the first one bc it IS special, and the closest to the humor of VC I’ve seen in awhile) This is a mockumentary/movie but it sneaks onto the top of the list bc it is just SO good, courtesy of @theamazingdrunk for reminding me in a comment on an older rec post: WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
- **Salem’s Lot – Stephen King, personally, I find several Stephen King books to be darkly humorous, this one is a good one. I find humor in the Shining and Firestarter, too, but less so.
- Vittorio – don’t forget Vittorio. Not sure if you read this one. It’s also by Anne Rice and technically not a VC book, he has a different origin story and is not part of the VC vampire group.
- Some short stories – @soyonscruels posted: those who dream only by night: the gothic short stories rec list – Not full-length books but still, short stories are good! There are 20 short stories listed, writers include @neil-gaiman, Roald Dahl, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, each of whom I’ve found to have some level of humor along w/ dark tones.
- More E. A. Poe is offered up here, from @keep-calm-and-heta-oni, which includes little capsules about each.
- @consultingcupcake said: “I really love the Cirque du Freak series, and **Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite. Both have teenage protagonists
- @fantasticfelicityfox said: The Historian is very good
- @stitcheskitty said: Sookie Stackhouse novels
- @riverofwhispers said: Carmilla is good
Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse books, but only the early ones.
the Rachel Morgan series but again starts out good gets weird later and it’s not about vampires so much as there are vampires in it. - @bluestockingcouture said: ‘The Angel’s Cut’, sequel to ‘The Vintner’s Luck’, is very atmospheric and well worth reading. Not quite as moving and intense, but there are some excellent new characters.
- @sanguinivora said: Also, as to voice: IWTV opens in the late 1700’s/early 1800’s. Don’t know about either a southern American or French hinterlands-with-a-gloss-of-Parisian dialect, but for the grammar and vocabulary, one cannot go too far wrong looking to the novels of Jane Austen and Patrick O’Brian.
- @dragontrainerdaenerys said: I just read Fevre Dream, George R.R Martin’s own vampire novel, and while I didn’t liked much his vampire mythology the main characters are charming! Besides, it’s set on the late 18XX and goes on the Mississipi River, so it has similar scenarios to IWTV!
- @baroquebat said: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, while futuristic, has a loooot of lovely gothic set pieces in the anime movie, plus its just gorgeous and has the rare treat of having a dhampir lead!
@annabellioncourt’s Recs, and these are mostly her descriptions, too, compiled from other recc posts:
- The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories – Angela Carter
- Carmilla – Bunch of adaptations of this.
- A Taste of Blood Wine – Freda Warrinton, for romance and decadence.
- **Blood Opera Sequence (or “Trilogy”?) – Tanith Lee’s vampire series was out when Lestat was playing rockstar
- Historian – Elizabeth Kostova, for its worldliness
- **Fevre Dream (yes its spelled fevre) by George R. R. Martin (yes, its THAT Martin, and his take on vampires is Very Good.)
- Sunshine by Robin McKinley
- **The Delicate Dependency by Michael Talbot, also for romance and decadence. (the recently-published edition from Valancourt Books has a foreword by @gothiccharmschool!)
- The Hunger by Whitley Scriber
- **Dracula – Bram Stoker, for its stereotype-setting content
- Lord Ruthven – Byronic vampire, Lestat doesn’t catch the irony of John Polidori’s mockery of the foppish, arrogant, and well…Lord-Byron-y vampire
>>>>Moar recs from @annabellioncourt under Spooky Book Recommendations
>>>>Moar recs from @gothiccharmschool: here, here, and in her #vampire books and #vampire novels tags.
>>>>My #VC adjacent recs tag
Anyone is welcome to reblog/comment on this with other VC-adjacent book recs!
@hyperbeeb (<– is very well-read and took one for the team to read Blood Vivicanti!), @gothiccharmschool, @fyeahgothicromance, @thebibliosphere, (@annabellioncourt, too, but you are technically off the hook as I’ve already posted your recs!), got any recs for books w/ similar humorous/ dark tone as VC?
I-want-my-IWTV 