Apr 15
Common misconceptions, part 2
As is the case with any fandom that’s been around for 20+ years, LJSdom is full of drama, the equivalent of “urban legends” (e.g., Who exactly won those Night World prizes from the first NA printing? It sure wasn’t me, and believe me, I bought a lot of postage for entries.), and so on.
4. Spellbinder and Enchantress are the same book: number three in the Night World series. Aside from Vampire Diaries: Dark Reunion being initially published in the UK as Vampire Diaries: The Reunion, this is the only major title change that comes to mind. (I’m excluding, of course, editions translated into languages other than English.) I can’t recall the official reason. I believe there was a TV show called Spellbinder in the UK, perhaps, and the publishers wanted to avoid confusion. Of course, it would’ve been nice if they would’ve included a note on the copyright page, but that would be logical, wouldn’t it?
5. Everyone in every fandom talks trash about newbies at some point, knowing full well that at one time, he/she was a newbie too. So I say the following knowing that I likely asked the same silly questions or brought up the same overdone points.
- Yes, we know that The Forbidden Game has A LOT in common with the movie Labyrinth. Whether LJS was inspired or “inspired” by it, it’s hard to say. I don’t recall ever seeing an official statement from her on the similarities.
- Perhaps more contentious are the similarities between LJS’s Dark Visions and the comic book series Gen13. If you’re unfamiliar with the comic, here’s a site that runs down the… convenient parallels, right down to the main characters’ names (Kaitlyn Fairchild vs. Caitlin Fairchild). (Warning: site is old and hasn’t been updated for a while.) LJS has mentioned this issue in an interview, which I can’t find at the moment. When I do, I’ll edit in the appropriate info.
6. One of the biggest issues arising from the recent run of omnibus reprints is how different fans “count” books. Newer fans often say they’ve read “all three Night World novels”, for example. To clarify: with the exception of The Secret Circle (whose omnibus editions contain one-and-a-half books each), each omnibus contains at least two complete NOVELS. For The Vampire Diaries, books 1 and 2 are in the first omnibus, and books 3 and 4 are in the second. That still means the original series consists of four novels; they’ve just been repackaged differently. (I run into a version of this problem with The Lord of the Rings all the time.)
- The original Vampire Diaries series had four novels. There are not “two original Vampire Diaries books.”
- The Forbidden Game series had three novels.
- Dark Visions also had three novels.
- Night World had nine novels. So if you say you’ve read “the first three Night World novels” to an older fan, he/she will likely think you’ve only read Secret Vampire through Spellbinder.
Some new fans complain that older fans are “too picky” about this. I disagree. Each of those novels was originally published separately. Each novel took time and consideration for LJS to craft. Before Vampire Diaries: The Return, she wrote 24 YA novels—no small feat.
