These days, when most of the teenage population knows about the whole Twilight/Vampire hype, it’s hard to pick up a book from the teen section at any book store or library that doesn’t have something to do with vampires. They are appearing everywhere and are constantly changing in behavior and appearance: from Stephenie Meyer’s sparkly vampires who never sleep to P.C Cast’s tattooed, nocturnal ones (who don’t sparkle in the sun).
Blood-drinking, drop-dead gorgeous, and usually un-dead, vampires are starting to appear everywhere. Even in some books aimed at children. Not such a bad thing, right? With this many options, then if Twilight isn’t your cup of tea, you should have no problem finding at least one book that fills your thirst for vampire books.
P.C and Kristen Cast’s vampire series “House of Night” starts off pretty ordinarily. Just your average high-school girl named Zoey, whom is failing her math class, and who’s boyfriend (Heath) is cheating on Zoey with Zoey’s best friend (Kayla). But like every boring, ordinary story, things can’t stay that way forever (thank God). As Zoey is on her way home, she is ‘marked’ by a Tracker; a special kind of vampyre who specializes in tracking down people who have the potential to become a vampyre. And no, the word vampyre is not spelled wrong; the spelling that you see is how it appears in the books. P.C Cast decided to dare to be different, and misspell a word to make her characters seem cooler.
But back to how you become a vampyre. In Zoey’s world, turning into a vampyre is something that occurs during your teenage years. If your hormone levels get too high, something ‘magical’ happens, and you become a fledging vampyre (granted that you get marked by a Tracker). Does this seem really vague to you? It should, since it’s never properly explained in the books and it’s hard to figure out exactly how this happens, much less explain it to someone else.
Anyways, so Zoey is marked, and all her human friends shun her, so she heads home, scared and uncertain. Of course, like most teenagers, Zoey has a tendency to exaggerate and make things sound worse that they really are. In Zoey’s words, she horribly abused and mistreated at home and has been suffering since her mother remarried three years ago. In reality, Zoey’s family life isn’t really that bad. Sure, her mom remarried a over-controlling, super-religious jerk, but let’s be honest. Zoey isn’t acting like a little angel herself, and she is not making life any easier for her parents.
To make a long story short, Zoey gets in a fight, runs away, and ends up going to her Grandmother’s lavender farm. Once there, she falls down, and… dies. But of course, this story would be way too boring if Zoey was just an ordinary vampyre (and would also be very boring if Zoey died in the second chapter). So to spice things up, Zoey meets with the Goddess Nyx, and becomes a very special, very powerful vampyre. In fact, Zoey is so special that there is no one else in history that has ever been like her; and no one on Earth is as powerful as her. Seems a bit over the top, but wait, it doesn’t stop there. In fact, everything in these books is either overly dramatic or extremely boring.
After Zoey is given her Goddess powers, she wakes up at the school. Oops, forgot to mention that tiny bit of information (that’s okay, you didn’t really need to know until now, since there’s no mention of vampyre finishing schools until this point). All vampyre fledglings, after they are marked by a tracker, have to go to the nearest ‘vampyre finishing school’ to…learn how to be a vampyre. Zoey wakes up (because her grandmother found her JUST IN TIME and brought her to the school JUST IN TIME) and meets the High Priestess of the school, a vampyre named Neferet. Neferet is very nice to Zoey, and takes her to meet her roommate. All the while, explaining how the House of Night (what the schools are called; this one, since it’s located in Tulsa, is the Tulsa House of Night) works.
Neferet introduces Zoey to another young fledgling called Aphrodite. Upon meeting Aphrodite, Zoey labels Aphrodite as “a crazy, controlling hag from hell.” How sweet. Zoey meets her roommate, a cute little hick named Stevie Rae. They (Zoey and Stevie Rae) become immediate best friends, blah blah blah.
The first book drags on with the same ‘and then, and then, AND THEN’ pattern that gets a little tedious after the first several chapters. The only few note worthy things that happen are: Zoey drinks the blood of her ex-boyfriend (Heath) and Imprints on him, falls in love with Aphrodite’s boyfriend Erik, steals Erik away from Aphrodite (because, obviously, it’s not okay for Aphrodite to be a be skank, but it’s perfectly okay for Zoey to be one) and then ends the books by taking away Aphrodite’s position as Leader of the Dark Daughters (the Dark Daughters are a group of people, not just girls, who rule the school). Happy ending.
In the second book, Zoey and all her friends find out they have MAGICAL powers: Zoey can summon spirit and all the elements and then Zoey’s friends can all summon and control a certain element (earth, water, fire, air). Then Stevie Rae dies and comes back as a zombie/vampyre mix. Zoey finds out Neferet is really working for the Dark Side, and that she must destroy Neferet before it’s too late. Blah blah blah again.
Moving neatly along to the third book, Zoey is already trying to juggle two boy-friends when she falls in love with a teacher. Now normally, relationships between teachers and students are usually avoided (and even more so in the vampyre world, where students are fledglings and teachers are full-out vampires). But because Zoey is SO SPECIAL, normal rules don’t apply to her, and yes, she can have an affair with a teacher; bringing the number of boy-friends up to a grand total of three. Zoey loses her virginity to the teacher (who is named Loren, by the way), finds out he was only using her and is really in love with Nerferet. After finding this out, Erik and Heath (both of whom Zoey was going out with) break-up with Zoey, leaving her without a boy-friend. Then Loren dies, Stevie Rae turns up and reveals herself in all her zombie glory to Zoey’s friends. Oops again, she forgot to tell them about this (probably because she was too busy screwing all her boy-friends). They get mad at her, but still help her with this MAGICAL ritual that almost kills Aphrodite, but helps Stevie Rae becomes less zombie-ish.
Keep in mind this is all happening in the last chapter of the book; the most exciting thing that happened before this was Zoey losing her virginity (ugh). Anyways, Stevie Rae has become some sort of different vampyre than Zoey and her friends are, and Aphrodite has become human again. But no worries, she’s still a MAGICAL human. Aphrodite runs off, Stevie Rae runs off, and Zoey is left alone, boy-friendless and friendless.
In the forth book, Zoey regains all her friends (including Stevie Rae, who is PERFECTLY FINE now, remember) and becomes friends with Aphrodite. She regains the trust of Erik and Heath (who is for some unknown reason spending a lot of time at the vampire school). Yada yada yada, they spend their time plotting against Nerferet; who is planning to raise some fallen-angel-God that has a serious problem with raping women. Then Zoey meets her soul mate (this would be the third time for those of you who are trying to keep count), a fledging vampyre named Stark. As usual, Stark dies and comes back to life, Stevie Rae dies and comes back to life (for the second or third time), the fallen-angel-God (who’s name is Kalona) rises from wherever he was and Zoey and friends (and boy-friends minus Stark) flee from the school to go live with Stevie Rae and her minions (remember the vampyres who aren’t normal vampyres, but they are still PERFECTLY FINE.)
In the fifth book, we find out that Zoey is even MORE SPECIAL that she was before, because she is actually the reincarnation of Kalona’s (remember the angel/God dude who likes to rape women in his free time) consort. So wonderful for her; now Zoey has to choose between a human (Heath) a vampyre (Erik, since he ‘Changed’ from a fledgling into a vampyre), an un-dead zombie/vampyre fledgling (Stark) and now a fallen angel. Then again, who says she has to choose? Zoey gets attacked by some monster (she was trying to save Heath), loses a lot of blood, makes-out with Heath in front of Erik and then heads back to the school. She pretends everything is fine and dandy, saves Stark from his un-dead zombie-ness, lusts over Kalona, and continues being annoying, perfectly, boringly special. Then in the end, along with the help of her friends, she banishes Kalona and Neferet (who has a thing for Kalona, even though Kalona loves Zoey, blah, blah, blah)… all in one paragraph. Happy ending again, Zoey can now add Stark to her lists of boy-friends, and since Kalona has been banished, she only has to deal with three, not four.
Last Halloween, the sixth book came out. It’s called Tempted.
Maybe you noticed how sarcastic this review was. It may have been sarcastic, but it wasn’t over-exaggerated. The books drag on like this, with Zoey constantly finding new boy-friends and then being made EVEN MORE special by the Goddess Nyx. These books are bad; these books are really bad. Like Twilight, House of Night seems to have been written by a horny, middle-aged white woman who decided that the world needs more vampires.
The House of Night series is bad; it’s really, really bad. Like Bella from Twilight, Zoey is supposed to be just ‘you’re average girl who everyone can relate to’. But it’s a little hard to relate to a girl who has a grand total of five boyfriends, and is the most powerful vampyre to ever exist.
So for those of you who like to read about skanky female vampyre main characters, weak plot-lines, lots and lots of hot male boy-toys (both vampyre and human) and like a happy ending, no matter what; House of Night is the series for you. However, if you like reading books that actually has a plot, and aren’t just soft porn, please find something else to read.
The problem really is that you can’t just read one of these books. They’re a lot like the cheap, steamy teenage angst books you keep hidden from your mom; you hate them, and yet, are just so addicted to them. ‘House of Night’ is much like this. The series is dull, poorly written and not something you would want your mother to know you’re reading. Because once you read first paragraph, you are hooked. And most certainly not in a good way.
So here’s a warning to those of you who are going to give the books a try. Read at your own risk.
The picture of the book cover ‘Marked’ was found at the site below
http://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=9780312360269/LC.GIF&client=sirsi&type=rw12
