When I was in high school I fell in love with the House of Night series by PC Cast and Kristen Cast. This series followed Zoey Redbird, marked as a fledgling to attend the House of Night, a school for those who are making the transition from human to vampyre. That series, from what I remember, was so good. It went from teenage drama to a battle between good and evil between immortals. There was love and loss and it truly enraptured me. Seeing that they wrote a new House of Night series, Otherworld, which followed Zoey and her friends after their transition. The first book in that series was Loved, published by Blackstone Publishing.
The beginning of this series, I’m sad to say, did not live up to its predecessor. One thing I will credit the mother-daughter duo with is worldbuilding. From the original series, there is so much that goes into how a vampyre changing, what these vampyres are like, the different types of vampyres, the religion they worship, etc. All of this is communicated through the narrative without an info dump. Also, in the new series, it was nice to see old familiar characters, but I found them this time to be rather one-dimensional, which brings me into why I really didn’t like this book.
For one, it seems like the writing style has gotten worse. I don’t know if it actually has or my tastes have changed since I was fourteen. Probably a little bit of both. There were a lot of anachronisms–over the course of the original series to now, the characters have only grown two years. It should still be 2013, but there are pop culture references to present day (or, present day at the point of publication in 2017). Those anachronisms might be fine if they didn’t still use dialogue that was normal in 2011. I don’t know anybody who still uses the phrase “awesomesauce.” Plus, these teenagers are too mature. Normally, that’s not a problem, but whenever there might be any sort of tension or conflict, they just have to say “but we love you and care about your mental and physical health” and that fixes everything.
Speaking of fixing everything, the main conflict in this novel is solved total Deus ex Machina. It’s a total cop-out, with the characters doing very little work.
Finally, I’m fine with incorporating the message that we should celebrate diversity, etc. But Aphrodite’s mom mimicking Donald Trump was a bit too on-the-nose. Like, don’t get me wrong, I agree that the whole “make it great again” is ridiculous, but I wouldn’t incorporate that word-for-word in an urban fantasy.
Unfortunately, and sadly since I loved the original series so much, I have to give this series one star out of five. I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of the books.
View PC Cast’s Website Here.
View Kristin Cast’s Website Here.
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