The Salem Branch - Your thoughts

[Pansity]

[spoiler]and elizabeth would never,ever open up collinwood to tourist groups.ever.[/spoiler]

I completely FORGOT about that! Seriously, I think they'd sell the last scrap of furniture in the house [spoiler]before they would ever let anyone inside for a tour![/spoiler]

On first glance I would agree.  But then again, I just remembered all the "stately homes" and castles in the UK, owned by very old and proud families, which are open to tour groups.  Bet they never thought they'd be doing that either, so Elizabeth's not doing that might not be as open as shut as we would think.

[michael c]

please forgive me if i get very opinionated here.

but i absolutely loathed this book.

hated it.

it's vulgar.it's crude.it's amateurish.

breathtaking in it's sheer awfulness.bad fanfiction written by someone who knows little about the show...except that she was intimately involved with it.

it would have infuriated me had it not been so laughably bad.

nothing about this book said "dark shadows" to me except the names.characters like elizabeth,carolyn,roger and quentin were mentioned perfunctorialy as a way to establish collinwood as the location but otherwise they were not involved in the plot at all.why lara parker felt the need to set up as backdrop a squalid hippie camp and charge the whole tone with sexual references and drug references and references to people's bodily functions i cannot guess.

as someone pointed out here perhaps ms.parker doesn't understand her subject matter as much as one would think.collinwood needs to stand as a world apart.an idealized place removed from the sordid realities of the world.it's naivity elemental to it's charm.the genteel world of an old monied family.well mannered,well spoken,well dressed people.not dirty,drug taking,sexually indescriminate hippies who use the woods as a latrine(a point ms.parker felt compelled to mention repeatedly).

some passages were dull,others made me squeemish.some episodes so overwrought they bordered on hysterical while others were laughable in their imagery.

ms.parker autograghed this at the fest and i understand her books can become collectables.so i'll put this in the closet with the rest of my memorabilia...otherwise i would have tossed it right in the trash.

[Midnite]

bad fanfiction

Two words that I've yet to see anyone else use in reviews of this book:

Mary Sue

[BuzzH]

please forgive me if i get very opinionated here.

but i absolutely loathed this book.  hated it.  it's vulgar.it's crude.it's amateurish.  breathtaking in it's sheer awfulness.bad fanfiction written by someone who knows little about the show...except that she was intimately involved with it.  it would have infuriated me had it not been so laughably bad.

nothing about this book said "dark shadows" to me except the names.characters like elizabeth,carolyn,roger and quentin were mentioned perfunctorialy as a way to establish collinwood as the location but otherwise they were not involved in the plot at all.why lara parker felt the need to set up as backdrop a squalid hippie camp and charge the whole tone with sexual references and drug references and references to people's bodily functions i cannot guess.

as someone pointed out here perhaps ms.parker doesn't understand her subject matter as much as one would think.collinwood needs to stand as a world apart.an idealized place removed from the sordid realities of the world.it's naivity elemental to it's charm.the genteel world of an old monied family.well mannered,well spoken,well dressed people.not dirty,drug taking,sexually indescriminate hippies who use the woods as a latrine(a point ms.parker felt compelled to mention repeatedly).

some passages were dull,others made me squeemish.some episodes so overwrought they bordered on hysterical while others were laughable in their imagery.  ms.parker autograghed this at the fest and i understand her books can become collectables.so i'll put this in the closet with the rest of my memorabilia...otherwise i would have tossed it right in the trash.

Don't hold back mscbryk, tell us how you really feel!  LOL!    Once again I'm GLAD I didn't waste my $20!  Or the time it would have taken to get it autographed!  Give me a story written by any FAN over this any day. 

[BuzzH]

bad fanfiction

Two words that I've yet to see anyone else use in reviews of this book:  Mary Sue. 

OMG!  Don't tell me she put HERSELF in the book too!  

[D_Friedlander]

The irony is that S.E. Hinton's would-have-been DS novel was rejected for many of the same reasons a lot of DS fans don't like the Lara Parker DS novel--- Multiple and in some cases, objectionable sexual and body function references, interference of the the outside world in some pure "Brigadoon" of the DS-verse (though this doesn't bother ME particularly), strong lauguage, behavior unbecoming to DS characters according to what we have been accustomed on the older program, drug usage.... 

The difference being that this "Mary Sue",-- or Sue (S.E.'s real given name), thanks to her previous repute as a writer, was able to "file off the serial numbers" as they say (though with uneven results) and submitted it as HAWKES HARBOR, which, apparently, was a modest bestseller in spite of mixed reviews--- not bad for a formerly prominent writer who was out of the business for over a decade. 

I didn't care for some of the obvious mistakes or changes Ms. Parker made to canon which should have been very quick and easy to correct--- just ask a fan!--- thus freeing up more time for her historical research, which appears to have been accurate enough.  However, in addtion to DS, I have read much from Ira Levin, the late Tom Tryon, and earlier in his career, Stephen King, all of whom have mixed modern-day dilemmas with tradtional horror / suspense themes, and whose characters move between these worlds.  There is some genuinely decent, genuinely fan-written DS fan-fiction, both online and for sale, that does the same.

 Perhaps with more stringent editing (all that leaf activity) and more input from DS fans who seem to have a  FAQ database in their brains, this could have been a better book.  But it's not that horrible--- I'll probably read it again to pick up anything I missed the first time..

[Gerard]

The one thing I could never get into was this whole Barnabas-and-Julia-deciding-to-plan-on-finally-getting-married thing.  To me, that came clear out of the blue.  It's clear from the "canon" that while Julia did have it for him, Barnabas never had those intentions for her.  He eventually did grow very affectionate for her and even came to love her, but only as a friend or as his sister, and he made that abundantly clear.  Julia finally accepted that and moved on with her romantic life.  It would've made far more sense to have her find a middle-aged Jewish lawyer who was ready to settle down and have them move to Boca Rotan, Florida to start their lives.

Gerard

[ProfStokes]

I haven't read The Salem Branch but I am enjoying everyone's comments very much. 

mscbryk, your comments about the book reminded me of Lara's Q&A at Ed Lambese's 2002 Halloweenathon.  At the time she was still working on the book (back then I think the working title was Barnabas's Descent) and she discussed at length how fascinated she was by the idea of a vampire becoming human, realizing his limitations, and deciding it was better to be a vampire again.  She specifically mentioned and seemed to be particularly enthralled with Anne Rice's Tale of the Body Thief in which the vampire Lestat temporarily becomes human and finds it's not as great as he remembered it.  I have read this book, and in it Rice goes into great physiological detail about Lestat's first visit to the toilet in 300 years, his physical symptoms from an illness, and a sexual liason with the purpose of highlighting how messy and miserable it is to be alive.  I think it's likely that this book may have influenced Parker's inclusion of all those bodily functions that you mentioned. Since that's not exactly my first choice of reading content either , I'm glad I steered away from TSB. 

ProfStokes

[onyx_treasure]

     I also disliked the book but I didn't care much for her other DS book either.  The characters were unrecognizable even Angelique and Barnabas.  The only working knowlege she seemed to have with the characters were their names.
     ProfStokes, I was hoping you would read it just for your keen insights but I don't think it is worthy of your time.  I wish I had stayed at Barnes and Noble and read it for free.  That's what I did with Hawkes Harbor.

[arashi]

Two words that I've yet to see anyone else use in reviews of this book:

Mary Sue

OMG! ::laughing:: It is TOTALLY Mary Sue, yet she actually played several characters in the story! And I can't remember if it was TSB or AD, but I got quite annoyed over time with the gajillion descriptions of the color of Angelique's eyes.

[Joeytrom]

From time to time, DS did have topical references like man going to the moon, radiation, the second world war, etc.

[michael c]

did lara parker pull a "mary sue" here?that's too funny.
i guess i'm not that familiar with fan fiction.

i never thought about it but when ms.parker is describing antoinette she is of course decribing an idealized version of herself.too funny.

while it is true that the show made occasional references to the topics of the day in general they steered clear of them.collinwood is actually a pretty "square" place when you think about it.this of course probably had as much to do with it's advertisers as anything else.a daytime drama relied heavily on ad dollars from such housewife friendly products as floor wax and laundry detergent.so lots of references to the drug culture and the sexual revoltion were out.

in my opinion this remove is what gives the show alot of it's charm and one of the many reasons that i found this book to be completely out of whack.

[Brandon Collins]

in my opinion this remove is what gives the show alot of it's charm and one of the many reasons that i found this book to be completely out of whack.

I so like OMIGOD totally agree with this! lol! The whole hippie scene present in the book was definitely unwelcome, and when LP originally spoke about it at the fest this year, she even said that she included it because it was something she had experimented with/something that she had gone through! YUCK! Keep your non/unmentionables to yourself lady!

I said earlier that the hippies completely took away from the universe that DS created, and many others have said it as well. DS is used as an "escape" from the "real world" by many people, and this completey shattered it! I prefer to stick to my DVDs and other various items for canon stuff. (Despite my constant usage of this thing I totally don't want to wear a wig! lol)

[MsCriseyde]

This is moving off topic a little bit, but I'm interested in how Lara Parker's novels compare to some of the other instances of actors writing fiction based on their characters. I'm not a big Star Trek fan, but I know that Shatner has had a hand in co-writing some novels based on the series. Are there other instances of this happening? Has there been a case of another actor writing solo about his/her character? How were these efforts received in their respective fandoms? Have Mary Sue comparisons been drawn in those instances?

[Para L. Time]

I just bought this book at a local bookstore last weekend and just got to reading a few chapters. I think it's pretty good so far. I especially like the Miranda du Val chapters (two so far). I don't know, I actually like the descriptions and the whole communing with nature as a witch in the 1690's.

One thing that I do not like so far is the relationship between Barnabas and Julia (in 1970's chapters). I find it unbelievable that they would become more than best friends. (Barnabas and Willie, yes, but not in this story) Also, WHY is Julia curing Barnabas's vampirism? I was under the impression that there was NO vampirism to cure?

Oh well, other than that, I am glad just to be reading something that is both a continuation of the show, and not a fanfiction (although I have seen the arguments that it IS a fanfiction, however, if this is the case, then the entire works of Anne Rice should be classified as fanfiction.)

I did notice something though. Everywhere and everything causes leaves to move, in every possible way. Cars cause leaves to fly, digging makes leaves fall in holes, and leaves turn colors of gemstones. Is it overkill, I don't think so (so far). I am still hoping I will see the symbolism once I have finished the book.

All in all, I think it is a GOOD story. Once I have read more than five chapters, I will be able to make a more knowledgable review.