Me bad: To clarify, I have seen reviews elsewhere (such as Amazon, etc) comparing "The Salem Branch" to be in the style of Bad Fanfiction. To me, "The Salem Branch" is considerably higher than Bad Fanfiction. So if TSB is in the style of "bad" fanfiction, then so is "The Mayfair Witches" or "The Vampire Chronicles", which have one or more Mary Sues in each book, described things "such as leaves" to the point of overkill, and disgusting bodily functions and/or sex. (The biggest offender being "The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned", which I still have a copy of and will never throw away, for sexy mummies are higher on a sensual level, for me, than vampires are. Don't know why.) All things that I obviously enjoy, as I read the Anne Rice books feverishly in the 1990's.
I guess I am a sucker for Mary Sues, for I am really enjoying the Miranda du Val parts of the story. I love the way she has with animals. Believe it or not, the 1600's feel very familiar to me, like a distant memory, and this part of American history has always made me feel a sort a kinship. I honestly believe that I lived through this time period in New England.
I still cannot stomach the relationship between Barnabas and Julia. Julia is being written so unappetizing, and the relationship seems so strained to the point I am starting to believe that Barnabas is only with her out of obligation, that I literally almost gagged when Barnabas kissed her. A Willie/Barnabas coupling would have been more feasible than this (at least for me), or at the very least have Barnabas with the Angelique look-alike, Antoinette.
I am still trying to realize Barnabas's need for medical treatment, in my mind, and the only conclusion that I can come up with is that somehow his 1840 self and 1970 self melded together when he returned to 1971. So that the uncursed meshed with the cursed, forming a creature with vampire dna that still needed a cure. Sounds corny, I know, but it is the only way I can reconcile this discrepancy.