is a novel by Scott Westerfeld. I had already perused his "Uglies" series, which I had enjoyed quite a little bit. Like its sibling, the Peeps series is what could be termed perioditterature. These are books, yet they are read as fast as you read a periodical. This might be construed as distaste, but nothing is further from my mind. I actually enjoy the raw satanic power I derive from owning a book in one day. Sometimes I wake up at night, just to taunt the poor book that couldn't withstand my reading ardour the day before with sardonical laughs and exclamations of "Gotcha! And in one stupid little day too! Bwahaha!". Then I wake from my dream, yet the fact remains I love this easy-come-easy-go litterature.
Peeps explores the vampire subgenre of fantasy litterature, with an innovative twist. Well the twist is not entirely innovative, but its treatment by the author is. In this series, vampirism is caused by a parasite - it's neither clear what exactly this parasite is, a worm, a bacteria? but it is transmitted by bodily fluids. The hero, and strangely enough, only narrator in the first book of the series has been infected through unprotected casual sex by this parasite, and is one of the lucky few who don't become raving lunatics. He has then been recruited by a "Night Watch" to be a vampire hunter (Blade, anyone?). The main twist is that there is more to it than either the protagonist, or the Night Watch know. This twist is brought about halfway through the book, and it rises crescendo, up to the end leaving the reader hungry for the rest of the story. Nicely done, even if it's just a grab for my money, no really!
But what really made this book an interesting read for me was the development of the parasite twist. For starters, every two chapters or so, Westerfeld tells us a gruesome parasite story, the champion of which, in my eyes, is this bacteria that litterally shapes species. This particuliar parasite, wolbachia, apparently never leaves a host, except when the host implants a parasited eggs inside another animal (especially ichneumon wasps). Apart from this case, its only means of colonizing a new host, then, is that it colonizes the descendants of the host by parasiting the eggs. One species in particular, Trichogramma is now able to reproduce without males, thanks (?) to the action of the bacteria. Talk about mind-control, and worse! Which is precisely how the effect of paratism are described throughout the book, starting with the Dicrocoelium dendriticum story. This one really mind controls poor ants to climb long stalks of grass, so that sheep will be sure to eat them, and so that the parasite can go to the next stage of its lifecycle inside the sheep.
All these stories about parasites are real, and the author cleverly blends elements from each of them to enlighten the reader as to how, and why the vampirism parasite causes these effects in humans. Some parasites mind-control animals, some are useful, some change whole species, some are dangerous, some kill whole species. At the end of the book, we understand how and why humans and this particular parasite maintain their Darwinian relationship, which is coincidentally the twist I spoke of earlier, and we just have to read the second book.
A quick note for french readers: I only could find it on Numilog. Not my first choice of bookshops, in fact I had never heard of it before.
I only started the second tome, the only remark I have at this point is that, in stark contrast to the first one, each and every chapter is spoken through the voice of a different protagonist, four of them so far.
PS: Scott Westerfeld found his inspiration in a scientific vulgarisation book titled "Parasite Rex". More about this one when amazon ships it to me.
