rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2009-11-10 09:54 am
rachelmanija) wrote2009-11-10 09:54 am
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Marked (House of Night, v 1), by P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
This is the vampire—excuse me, vampyre finishing school book.
Zoey Redbird has normal teenage problems – her stepfather is in a whackadoo Christian cult, her boyfriend is not too bright and drinks a lot, and she fears geometry – until she’s marked by a vampyre. Excuse me, Marked.
Wham! Next thing she knows, she’s attending vampyre boarding school. This point was a little unclear, but apparently the Mark doesn’t turn you into a vampyre, but is given to you after you’ve already spontaneously mutated in order to warn you to get yourself to vampyre academy. Once there, you become a fledgling trained in the ways of vampyres. But there’s a catch: about ten percent of all fledglings have their bodies reject the Change, and drop dead before graduation.
This is obviously not going to happen to Zoey, though, because she is extremely special. How is she special? Let me count the ways:
1. Her crescent moon Mark, which is normally just an outline on fledglings, is filled in.
2. The vampyre Goddess Nyx came to her in a vision and told her she had some sort of important mission.
3. Her personal advisor is the headmistress.
4. She craves blood, which normally doesn’t happen till much later.
5. Her wise Cherokee grandmother imparted special Cherokee wisdom to her.
6. She sees ghosts (or possibly zombies).
7. A very few full vampyres can control ONE of the five elements. Zoey, though still a fledgling, can control all five!
Though I mock, I actually quite enjoyed this. It’s kind of terrible and trashy, but the fun kind of terrible and trashy.
For all her specialness, Zoey is a likable character with a sense of humor that’s often actually funny. The academy is a fun setting, with its classes in Vampyre Sociology 101, cat companions, snobbish blood-sucking sororities, and secret rituals in the dead of night. The pace seems fast even though objectively not a whole ton of a lot happens, and though I never feared for any of the major characters, the Casts do a good job of making the possibility of sudden death hang over the characters’ heads. And despite the obligatory presence of a predictably boring male love interest, Erik Night (!), it’s overall very female-centric.
The novel is told in first person, and one of its main strengths is that, with some lapses, it really does read like a teenager wrote it: casual, teenage-cynical alternating with teenage-earnest, simultaneously frank and judgmental about sex. And one of its main weaknesses is that it REALLY reads like a teenager wrote it, complete with bad sentence structure, pointless rambling, etc. It also has a lot of teenage-plausible casual offensiveness – I winced, for instance, every time she called something “retarded.” However, that isn’t just Zoey being in character. There’s also the wise old magical Indian grandmother, not to mention the sympathetic gay guy who isn’t weird and femme like those other gay guys. Etc. That being said, that sort of thing is kept to a relatively low murmur, and there’s clearly an effort, however hamhanded, made at being inclusive.
What really made me want to read more, though, were the hints at the end that all was not as it seemed, and that some standard plot and character tropes might not go in the way I was expecting. Though I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I tore through this and will check the library for the sequel.
View on Amazon: Marked (House of Night, Book 1)
Zoey Redbird has normal teenage problems – her stepfather is in a whackadoo Christian cult, her boyfriend is not too bright and drinks a lot, and she fears geometry – until she’s marked by a vampyre. Excuse me, Marked.
Wham! Next thing she knows, she’s attending vampyre boarding school. This point was a little unclear, but apparently the Mark doesn’t turn you into a vampyre, but is given to you after you’ve already spontaneously mutated in order to warn you to get yourself to vampyre academy. Once there, you become a fledgling trained in the ways of vampyres. But there’s a catch: about ten percent of all fledglings have their bodies reject the Change, and drop dead before graduation.
This is obviously not going to happen to Zoey, though, because she is extremely special. How is she special? Let me count the ways:
1. Her crescent moon Mark, which is normally just an outline on fledglings, is filled in.
2. The vampyre Goddess Nyx came to her in a vision and told her she had some sort of important mission.
3. Her personal advisor is the headmistress.
4. She craves blood, which normally doesn’t happen till much later.
5. Her wise Cherokee grandmother imparted special Cherokee wisdom to her.
6. She sees ghosts (or possibly zombies).
7. A very few full vampyres can control ONE of the five elements. Zoey, though still a fledgling, can control all five!
Though I mock, I actually quite enjoyed this. It’s kind of terrible and trashy, but the fun kind of terrible and trashy.
For all her specialness, Zoey is a likable character with a sense of humor that’s often actually funny. The academy is a fun setting, with its classes in Vampyre Sociology 101, cat companions, snobbish blood-sucking sororities, and secret rituals in the dead of night. The pace seems fast even though objectively not a whole ton of a lot happens, and though I never feared for any of the major characters, the Casts do a good job of making the possibility of sudden death hang over the characters’ heads. And despite the obligatory presence of a predictably boring male love interest, Erik Night (!), it’s overall very female-centric.
The novel is told in first person, and one of its main strengths is that, with some lapses, it really does read like a teenager wrote it: casual, teenage-cynical alternating with teenage-earnest, simultaneously frank and judgmental about sex. And one of its main weaknesses is that it REALLY reads like a teenager wrote it, complete with bad sentence structure, pointless rambling, etc. It also has a lot of teenage-plausible casual offensiveness – I winced, for instance, every time she called something “retarded.” However, that isn’t just Zoey being in character. There’s also the wise old magical Indian grandmother, not to mention the sympathetic gay guy who isn’t weird and femme like those other gay guys. Etc. That being said, that sort of thing is kept to a relatively low murmur, and there’s clearly an effort, however hamhanded, made at being inclusive.
What really made me want to read more, though, were the hints at the end that all was not as it seemed, and that some standard plot and character tropes might not go in the way I was expecting. Though I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I tore through this and will check the library for the sequel.
View on Amazon: Marked (House of Night, Book 1)