Please note that on Ciao, I'll be spending sundays as my reading and rating day - the site is so s...
Please note that on Ciao, I'll be spending sundays as my reading and rating day - the site is so slow generally that the only way to avid meltdown is to do it all at once!
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This book is the third in the House of Night series written by mother and daughter team P.C and Kirsten Cast . With this being book 3 in the series, this review will contain some spoilers from books one and two, so if you haven't read them but plan to, you may want to pass over the next two paragraphs , although I have tried to keep it vague .
***A recap of events so far***
Okay, so Zoeys been a flegdling at the House of Nught Vampire finishing school for a couple of month now, and already she's had enough drame to last her a lifetime - she's had to deal with her fledgeling senses being more advanced than usual, resulting in her craving her human ex boyfreinds blood and imprinting with him . As if that wasn't enough, she also had to overthrow evil bitch queen Aprhrodite, the leader of the Dark Daughters, an exclusive school society that leads various rituals in celebration of the goddess .
Having done all that, she then had to take over the society herself and make new and fairer rules for them - as well as dealing with the fact that people from her old life were going missing and the fact that somehow she had three boyfriends . To top off all that, she then ended up seeing her best friend die - and then ressurect as some strange new kind of monster
***
So, as we enter the Third book, chosen, Zoeys pretty swamped with secrets - she's hasn't told the rest of her friends that Stevie Rae is not so much dead, but undead - and making a habit out of snacking on humans . She knows Stevie Rae was their friend too, but she also knows their minds are vulnerable to intrusions from Neferet, the high priestess, whom she's starting to suspect isn't as nice as she pretends to be, and while she knows they'd never deliberately betray a secret, she just can't take that risk .
There is one person whose mind isn't vulnerable to intrusions though, and that's the seriously evil Aphrodite, who is only ever out for number one, despite often having visions of the future.
Can Zoey persuade Aphrodite to help her try and get Stevie Rae's humanity back ? Does Stevie Rae even want any help? And how can they do all this in between Zoeys many boyfriends whilst avoiding Neferets watchful gaze?
I thin the books as they come along are starting less and less to show the fact that they are written by two people . Whilst the first book in the series I found incredibly disjointed in places, where one paragraph varied greatly in style from the next, this book flows a lot more smoothly .
I still find the style of the book a little too teenage though - now, I know it's aimed at teenagers, so perhaps all the constant snogging and bitchiness is more comfortable to readers of a younger age than me . Whilst I ploughed through the first few books despite all this, and this one too, it is starting to grate on me - I feel the book has been dumbed down, and rather a lot of the text seems to involve people exchanging insults .
I'm also getting a little tired of the 'Oh, things are getting difficult, I know, lets call the elements and talk to Nix and magically everything will be fixed!' thing- it gets a little repetive, despite efforts to word it differently each time it's used.
With that said, some of the emotional and confrontational scenes in the book were brilliant, and the characters in the book developed a little more - Aphrodite stopped being quite so evil, Neferet became significantly more dodgy,and Eric became a man! Zoey still refuses to swear though , her most common curse being 'Well , Hell!'.
I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others I've read so far - The plot was decent, and had a good amount of twists and turns in it, but the very teenageness of the book irritated me a fair bit.
However, I still think despite my moaning it's an OK book, and I've already continued on with the series, so clearly I didn't hate it too much. I just think that compared to the first two books it's a weaker link .
3 stars
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I guess it had gone okay with Stevie Rae. I mean she had agreed to meet me tomorrow. And ... more
she hadn't tried to bite me which was a plus. Of course the whole trying-to-eat-the-street-person thing was highly disturbing ... Zoey's best friend Stevie Rae...
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Sep 29th, 2009
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