I am just finishing up on my first ever book of Urban Fantasy, the genre I   chose to read for this exercise. It is called Generation V by M.L. Brennan and contains a hefty serving of modern vampires, both American and European, garnished with a few elves, witches, strange little fox shape shifters from Japan called kitsumes. I have to emphasize that in general I hate fantasy, even as a child I preferred the realistic Little House books to anything that EB White wrote, I literally start falling asleep the minute an animal starts talking, but I thought that the  placement of fantasy in a modern  city may be of interest to me -- so here I am reading about American vampires in Providence Rhode Island. I am having a bit of a problem figuring out which demographic this book would appeal to, certainly not to mine since I did not know what Generation V was until I looked it up ( it is the vegan generation and this is about a literally vegan young vampire who works in a run down coffee shop) -- so, therefore, it must appeal to a very much younger reader. It is categorized as Science fiction fantasy, although there is nothing science about it and I cannot understand how anyone browsing the science fiction collection would even bother to pick it up at all. It may appeal a bit to romance readers -- that mainly because of the cover, a hot, handsome young vampire man in a tight black tee and blue jeans ( that certainly is what originally drew me to it), but there is no romance in it whatsover, in fact the opposite of romance, so I am still wondering how people who might like this type of fiction ( whoever they may be ) would ever find it or identify it as likeable. The vampire legend goes back a long time both historically and in literature -- but it is important to note that vampires and their habits of feeding off of young ladies originate in basic sources of terror for older generations -- those being sex and the power of sexual feelings and, most importantly, the loss of the soul via the all too human's tendency to forget God amidst the various pleasures that the earth provides us with, be that sex, food, money, anything else.  As that legend has been written about again and again, this profound meaning has been replaced by silly stuff, adolescent first times, the depiction of vampires as teenagers and babies, and on and on because we have culturally journeyed away from profound ideas and have basically pulled God and vampires down to our own rather infantile level. We no longer fear sex ( although perhaps we should think about the deep emotions and ties that  sexual feelings can bring, particularly in teenagers) and we either no longer believe in God or we think of him as some kind of neighbor that we can go couponing with every week. ( I am no better than anybody else in this regard -- here I am reading vampire literature instead of Pilgrim's Progress) This book is, to some degree, the very furthest away from the original vampire legend. Our almost vampire hero is a 26 year old film major who can only find a job in a run down coffee house, who is alienated from his extremely powerful vampire family because he objects to their savage indifference to the suffering they may cause human beings, and is basically an attractive, loser pushover -- cheated on by his girlfriend and used by his roommate as a source of cheap accomodation.  The vampire mythology in this book is, to some degree, unique-- older vamps are soulless and horrible and commit unspeakable crimes against innocents. This is one thing that makes me extremely uncomfortable about this book -- it juxtaposes relaxed humor and raucous banter against pedophilia and child murder -- the tone is light but the crimes are profoundly horrific. I don't know if the author intended the bouts of stomach churning that jokes and implied child rape within one paragraph can cause, but I don't think I would be unique in judging this particular quality of the book as unsettling. There is no graphic violence or explicit sex in the book -- everything is implied, but anybody with even a second rate imagination can kind of grasp what is going on. Our young vampire hero pals up with a wise cracking fox shape shifter ( her alternate shape is a beautiful young lady who likes to wear thongs) in order to stop the unspeakable crimes to which I have just referred. As the book progresses, he matures a bit and starts taking the lead in both attaining and using his vampiric powers for good ( sort of a new vampire super-hero -- I mean how far away from the original legend can we go?) Surprisingly, apart from the repugnancy of the humor and one liners mixed with the reality of the rape of innocents, I really do not have to hold my nose to read this book and I did not fall asleep. It is kind of like watching television and switching from one station to the next every five seconds - something I am very proficient at. The vampire legend presented is detailed and original and there is a lot of clever banter -- new to me because being old I don't banter anymore and I am not able to discern what is old, new, original or used insofar as modern banter is concerned -- so it all sounds clever to me. So, this exploration into this genre has not been too horrible and I may even read the second part of this American Vampire series, just to check up on the hero and see how he progresses -- who knows maybe he will progress in the right direction toward the original intent of vampire literature -- something which terrifies us onto the straight and narrow path toward heaven -- talk about strange juxtapositions, that -- vampires and heaven. Oh well, we shall see.