Betsy the Vampire Queen, properly known as the
Undead series, is a
Paranormal Romance book series by MaryJanice Davidson about Betsy Taylor. Betsy loses her job and is killed in the same day (her 30th birthday), but awakes undead in a funeral home. After attempting multiple times to kill herself, Betsy realizes that she is a vampire — not only a vampire, but queen of the vampires.
The series is a humorous jab at many popular vampire stereotypes. While the vampires are played completely serious, Betsy's bubbly personality takes the wind out of their sails.
The books are, in chronological order:
- Undead and Unwed
- Undead and Unemployed
- Undead and Unappreciated
- Undead and Unpopular
- Undead and Uneasy
- Undead and Unworthy
- Undead and Unwelcome
- Undead and Unfinished
- Undead and Undermined
- Betsy the Vampire , the first four books collected into one anthology.
- Betsy Bride of the Vampire, a collection of books five through seven, plus the short story Dead and Loving It.
This series contains examples of:
- A Chat With Satan: Betsy regularly has these. Satan apparently resembles Lena Olin.
- All Women Love Shoes: Betsy isn't all women but she's neurotically obsessed with them.
- Anti Anti Christ: Laura, the Devil's Daughter. Mostly.
- Artifact of Doom: The Book of the Dead.
- Badass Normal: The Blade Warriors, a group of teenage vampire hunters.
- Because Destiny Says So: The Book of the Dead pretty much predicts every single plot development.
- Big Bad: Nostro. Though he dies very quickly.
- Undead and Unfinished introduces a new one: Betsy's future self.
- Black Best Friend: Jessica.
- Blonde Republican Sex Kitten: Betsy.
- Creator Provincialism: Minnesota is the heart of the vampire world before Betsy takes over.
- Deadpan Snarker: Sinclair.
- The Devil: Appears as a middle-aged woman.
- Emergency Transformation: Subverted. Jessica refuses to become a vampire when faced with cancer.
- Expy: Sinclair bears a lot of resemblance, personality-wise, to the butler from MJD's earlier Alaskan Royalty series.
- Fetish Fuel: Betsy brings it up regarding Sinclair, herself, cheerleaders and schoolgirls. Just for the start.
- First Person Smart Ass: Betsy herself.
- Foe Yay: Jo, Sinclair, and Nick.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: Betsy herself. A large portion of her problems comes from attempting to make every other vampire in the world into one.
- Future Me Scares Me: Future Betsy is mighty scary indeed in Undead and Unfinished.
- Genius Ditz: Betsy at vampiredom.
- Ghostly Goals: The Queen of the Vampires can see the dead. They want stuff done.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: How other vampires view Betsy.
- Good People Have Good Sex: Sinclair and Betsy, though that may be "Vampires have good sex."
- Handsome Lech: Sinclair pre-Betsy.
- Hellfire: Laura is capable of generating this.
- Heroic BSOD: Sinclair in the second book, when Betsy's been staked and, they think, killed. As Father Markus said, "It would have been touching if it wasn't so terribly, terribly sad."
- Holy Burns Evil: Vampires are hurt by holy items.
- Kiss of the Vampire: Played straight; the kiss of a vampire makes people deeply in love with the vampire.
- Les Yay: Tina has a little of this with Betsy, before she becomes surrogate mom to the group. Tina also has a relationship with an Asian American vampire hunter.
- Pet Homosexual: Marc.
- Motormouth: Betsy in a nutshell.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Lampshaded on several occasions with Betsy.
- Not Himself: Betsy struggles with this due to fasting, The Book of the Dead, and evil future selves.
- One Steve Limit: Subverted with the Ant and Antonia.
- Our Vampires Are Different: The majority are extremely weak, vulnerable to nearly all the traditional weaknesses and holy items especially. Betsy, as Queen of the Vampires, is immune to most of the traditional weaknesses.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: They all live together in Cape Cod and some of them are psychic.
- Screw Destiny: Betsy attempts this, usually to miserable failure.
- It becomes a major plotline after Undead and Unfinished. Where Betsy must keep herself from becoming an Evil Overlord.
- Stable Time Loop: Over the course of Undead and Unfinished, Betsy becomes part of several. Subverted near the end, when she meets her evil future self. The future self acts like this is the case at first... and then Betsy completely deviates from her future self's memories, throwing her off.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Book of the Dead, again. The reason Betsy doesn't just speed-read it and know everything? Reading more than two or three pages at a time turns you into a monstrous Jerkass. This might seem minor, except that when you turn a vampire into a jerkass... (In Betsy's case, it involved nearly killing Jessica.)
- Uncle Pennybags: Jessica.
- Vampire Fiction
- Vampire Monarch: Betsy and Eric.
- Waking Up At The Morgue: Betsy has one of these moments, though it's a funeral home.
- Wicked Stepmother: AND HOW!
- Your Vampires Suck: How Betsy reacts to the Nostro dominated vampires of the world.
- Amusingly, Betsy is largely a traditional vampire with a stake through the heart immobilizing her and sunlight making her fall asleep. It's other vampires who are more traditional Hollywood Vampires with massive weaknesses to sunlight and holy items.
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