This is another saga of teenage/young adult vampire fiction, a genre which regularly comes back into vogue. Cast seems to have piggybacked on the huge success of the Harry Potter series, and I suppose possibly on the Stephanie Meyer Twilight saga which were written earlier than House of Night. This isn't a criticism, I am a big believer in the adage of if it ain't broke don't fix it; if there is a current trend and you are confident that your work is sufficiently different to make it succeed then jump on the bandwagon.

***Plot***

Zoe Heffer (her step-loser's surname, not 'hers') is sixteen when the tracker marks her. She is an essentially normal teenager until then. Zoe's mother and her step-father are very god-fearing, and see this as confirmation of Zoe's evil, but luckily for Zoe her Cherokee grandmother Redbird is much more supportive. She moves to the House of Night, but before doing so goes for a last visit to her grandmother, on the way she has a vision/hallucination/dream where she is visited by the Vampyre Goddess Nyx who marks Zoe out as something special.

When she first enters House of Night, Zoe is really nervous and can't see herself ever fitting in. In next to no time she has made friends, and is finding her lessons both enjoyable and fairly easy, and has been chosen by the school's High Priestess (basically head teacher) as her mentee. Like any teenager, there is an 'in' group that Zoe doesn't fit in with and dislikes, this group is the Dark Daughters, the leader of whom has special gifts given by Nyx. Zoe discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the High Priestess in training, is abusing her gifts, with her friends Zoe takes on the Dark Daughters.

I had heard very good reviews of this saga, including from Ciao members, and so felt fairly confident that I would enjoy the books, so confident in fact that I bought the first three books in one go!

The characters are quite good, but not so well developed as in some other books, but the storyline itself is enjoyable and strong enough that this isn't a problem, and as the saga progresses you do get to know the characters much more thoroughly. The writing is good, not great, but again the storyline makes up for any downfalls.

***Would I recommend it?**

If you are thinking that this could be a book for your kids, grandchildren or so on, then this is relevant to you: the saga is aimed at quite late teens and has a much more overtly sexual content than I'd expect for this age group. The twilight series doesn't, it has a sexual undertone but nothing explicit, whereas in the House of Night saga there is a part where Zoe says that blood drinking is orgasmic, another part where she talks about not being a virgin much longer, and so on. If you are happy that your children are mature enough, then this is a great read, if they're still 14, I'd say this is likely to be a bit much.