House of Night: The Quest for Cringe Continues - White-Kettle-Shufflepunk reads some terrible vampire books

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Last time, our merry little book-club sat down and read two shitty trans superhero novels. So, the law of balance dictates that now have to read a shitty feminist book series--but don't worry my loyal TERFettes, we're talking about that special brand of radlib feminism that's about as friendly to most women as Jack the Ripper. However, don't expect much "transgender representation" either, because this thread is also a trip back in time, all the way to that distant, forgotten Year of Our Lord 2007. Put it this way, today's fodder was originally published by St. Martin's Press, an imprint of Macmillan. What have they put more recently? Oh, just a little book called Manhunt.

If I asked you Good Readers what the worst vampire story of all time was, a lot of you would probably say Twilight. To which I say, cowards! Cowards and fools! Obviously, defending Twilight isn't nearly as contrarian today (at least out there in the fields beyond the Farms) as it was in 2007, but I'm not trying to convince you Twilight was some great work of art. I'm just saying, there are much, much worse vampire books out there.

House of Night is an interesting little cultural artifact. In terms of how it was packaged and marketed, it seems to me like it was kind of halfway between something like Twilight or Harry Potter--young adult and children's books that were sold as author-driven art--and like, those series you see at Scholastic book fairs that are made up of a million and one thin little volumes, half of which are the work of ghostwriters. Sometimes they come shrink-wrapped with, like, plastic jewelry or something. Think Animorphs or the original Vampire Diaries.

House of Night, though, as far as I can tell, involved no ghostwriters, instead being the work of mother-daughter duo PC Cast and Kristen Cast. Well, PC Cast wrote the books and Kristen apparently "edited" them, so I'm sensing a bit of a Christopher Paloni marketing gimmick. Although, Kristen did later release some solo books, so maybe she was more involved than I'm giving her credit for. Credit, blame, same thing, really.

That's enough preamble. Let's begin. This is the first book, Marked. Yeah, one word verb titles were big at the time.

For our wonderful agent, Meredith Bernstein, who said the three magic words: vampyre finishing school. We heart you!

Did she pronounce it "vampyre?" Casts? Did she really? Also, good to know this series isn't the fruit of any kind of original idea on the part of the authors. Not surprising, really. House of Night started in 2007, just two years after Twilight burst onto the scene. Unlike a lot of the Twilight bandwagon hoppers, House of Night never got any kind of movie, which should tell you something.

I would like to thank a wonderful student of mine, John Maslin, for research help and for reading and giving feedback on many early versions of the book. His input was invaluable.
A big THANKS GUYS goes out to my Creative Writing classes in the school year 2005-2006. Your brainstorming was lots of help (and quite amusing).

If I was in a creative writing class, and I found out my teacher wrote House of Night, I'd ask for a refund.

I also want to thank my fabulous daughter, Kristin, for making sure we sound like teenagers. I couldn’t have done it without you. (She made me write that.)—PC

I really hope teenagers in 2007 didn't sound like the cast of House of Night.

PC and Kristin would both like to thank their dad/grandpa, Dick Cast, for the biological hypothesis he helped create as the basis for the House of Night’s vampyres. We love you Dad/G-pa!

That's right, we're going to try to "scientifically" explain vampires. In a story where they're blessed by an actual, literal goddess. Peter Watts is spinning in his grave, and he's not even dead yet!

From Hesiod’s poem to Nyx


“There also stands the gloomy house of Night;
ghastly clouds shroud it in darkness.
Before it Atlas stands erect and on his head
and unwearying arms firmly supports the broad sky,
where Night and Day cross a bronze threshold
and then come close and greet each other.”
(Hesiod, Theogony, 744 ff.)

I have the terrible suspicion this book won't be as fun as Hades.

Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker. Kayla was talking nonstop in her usual K-babble, and she didn’t even notice him. At first. Actually, now that I think about it, no one else noticed him until he spoke, which is, tragically, more evidence of my freakish inability to fit in.

It must be hard being the only sighted kid at a school for the blind, I guess. This is Zoey, our... I guess calling her a "heroine" is more accurate than it was for Danny Tozer, but only by so much. The series is going to try very hard to convince us she's a deep, misunderstood outcast, despite her generally coming off as the very image of a vapid, teenage millenial pulled from the darkest depths of a boomer's mind. Kayla, meanwhile, is Zoey's best friend, which naturally means they regard each other with only the deepest contempt. Very David from Dreadnought, actually.

Like Danny, Zoey seems to have gone her entire life without forming any genuine human connection. On the one hand, this will make it easier for her to leave everything behind when she's summoned to Vampire Hogwarts. On the other, it closely resembles something we call "bad writing."

“No, but Zoey, I swear to God Heath didn’t get that drunk after the game. You really shouldn’t be so hard on him.”

“Yeah,” I said absently. “Sure.” Then I coughed. Again. I felt like crap. I must be coming down with what Mr. Wise, my more-than-slightly-insane AP biology teacher, called the Teenage Plague.

...Why? Why is he "more-than-slightly-insane"? Why does he call what sounds like the fucking flu "the teenage plague"? Does he think he's a characters in The Darkest Minds? This is way too long winded and specific to work as a throwaway joke or whatever.

If I died, would it get me out of my geometry test tomorrow? One could only hope.

#relatable, amirite, fellow kids?

“Zoey, please. Are you even listening? I think he only had like four—I dunno—maybe six beers, and maybe like three shots. But that’s totally beside the point. He probably wouldn’t even have had hardly any if your stupid parents hadn’t made you go home right after the game.”

We shared a long-suffering look, in total agreement about the latest injustice committed against me by my mom and the Step-Loser she’d married three really long years ago. Then, after barely half a breath break, K was back with the babbling.

Who wants to bet that the Casts completely fail at making the "Step-Loser" look like a bastard? I don't know why so many YA authors struggle with that, when they're so clearly capable of making their main characters look like arseholes by accident.

“Plus, he was celebrating. I mean we beat Union!” K shook my shoulder and put her face close to mine. “Hello! Your boyfriend—”

“My almost-boyfriend,” I corrected her, trying my best not to cough on her.

I'm guessing "almost-boyfriend" is code for "I don't feel I owe you any kind of emotional availability or commitment, but will freak the fuck out if you go out with other girls or don't prioritize my bullshit at all times."

“Whatever. Heath is our quarterback so of course he’s going to celebrate. It’s been like a million years since Broken Arrow beat Union.”
“Sixteen.” I’m crappy at math, but K’s math impairment makes me look like a genius.

Because as we all know, when someone says "like a million years" they're always being literal. God forbid someone not remember the last time the school football team beat another team off the top of their head.

“Again, whatever. The point is, he was happy. You should give the boy a break.”

“The point is that he was wasted for like the fifth time this week. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to go out with a guy whose main focus in life has changed from trying to play college football to trying to chug a six-pack without puking. Not to mention the fact that he’s going to get fat from all that beer.” I had to pause to cough. I was feeling a little dizzy and forced myself to take slow, deep breaths when the coughing fit was over. Not that K-babble noticed.

“Eww! Heath, fat! Not a visual I want.”

Ah yes, the worst side-effect of teenage alcoholism: getting a beer-gut. Good to know Zoey has her priorities straight.

I'll tell you this now, it's really hard not to quote every line of this book. Whereas Dreadnought's prose was generally workmanlike and boring, House of Night's writing is hilariously shit on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realized pretty quick that he wasn’t technically “dead.” He was undead. Or un-human. Whatever. Scientists said one thing, people said another, but the end result was the same.

Something relatively unique about House of Night, at least compared to most modern fantasy: there is no "masquerade." "Vampyres" (we are not going to be making a habit of using that spelling) are a publicly acknowledged fact of life, and unlike, say, True Blood, this isn't a recent state of affairs. People have known about vampires since the dawn of recorded history, and pretty much every real-life celebrity the Casts like is a vampire in this world. Naturally, besides the cast of Glee all being vampires (seriously) nothing else seems to be that different. Politics, culture, history, religion, all exactly the same, but everyone you might recognise from the cover of Entertainment Weekly is a vampire. It's staggeringly lazy.

There was no mistaking what he was and even if I hadn’t felt the power and darkness that radiated from him, there was no frickin’ way I could miss his Mark, the sapphire-blue crescent moon on his forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work that framed his equally blue eyes.

Yeah, all vampires in this world have shitty glowing face tattoos. I feel like the whole point of this series was to spawn a dress-up flash game.

He was a vampyre, and worse. He was a Tracker.

Well, crap! He was standing by my locker.

“Zoey, you’re so not listening to me!”

Then the vampyre spoke and his ceremonial words slicked across the space between us, dangerous and seductive, like blood mixed with melted chocolate.

So, a trick-or-treater who fell and skinned their knee, got it.

“Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!”

He lifted one long, white finger and pointed at me. As my forehead exploded in pain Kayla opened her mouth and screamed.

Trackers are basically special vampires whose job is to find nascent vampires and tell them to get their ass to the House of Night, which despite having a name like an afrocentric cult that initiates members by sending them out to kill white people, is basically Vampire Hogwarts. You see, vampirism here isn't a curse, or something transmitted virally. A vampire can't turn a human into another of their kind. Instead, it's more like a kind of genetic potential that manifests in adolescence. Like X-Men. I'm not sure why any scientist in-universe would describe them as "undead" when they're clearly just mutated humans.

Now, one of the actual bullshit critiques of Twilight back in the day was that Meyer "changed the rules" of vampirism. That's nonsense. "Vampire" is just an umbrella term for literally thousands of blood drinking folkloric monsters from around the world. There is no "vampire bible." Hell, a lot of "canonical" vampire traits are very recent inventions. Dracula didn't burn in sunlight, that was invented for the film Nosferatu only a little over a hundred years ago. I'd argue that one of the great things about vampires as a literary device is how variable they can be while still being recognizable as vampires.

So, the problem with House of Night isn't that its vampires are different from Stoker or Rice, it's that their rules are stupid as shit. Seriously, I'd defend Meyer's take on vampires way before I would the Casts.

Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!”

He lifted one long, white finger and pointed at me. As my forehead exploded in pain Kayla opened her mouth and screamed.

Also, if they don't get there in like, three days, they die. Despite this, and the fact that "fledglings" experience extreme physical and mental weakness during their transition, Trackers seem to make no effort to actually help them get to their nearest House of Night. It's a bit like if Hagrid busted into the Hut on the Rock, told Harry he was a wizard, then immediately fucked off again.

When Zoey comes too, Kayla is freaking out because she has a mark on her forehead now.

As usual, I said the first ridiculous thing that came to mind. “K, your eyes are popping out of your head like a fish.”

I didn't know "ridiculous" was a synonym for "bitchy and tepid."

Oh, God, Zoey! What are you going to do? You can’t go to that place. You can’t be one of those things. This can’t be happening! Who am I supposed to go to all of our football games with?”

Why the fuck is Kayla so upset by Zoey being a vampire? As we'll see, pretty everyone's she's grown up watching on TV or in movies is one. I'd get her being worried that Zoey might die during the change, but as written, this is like a teenage girl being horrified their friend is turning into... I don't know, a TikTok star?

I noticed that all during her tirade she didn’t once move any closer to me. I clamped down on the sick, hurt feeling inside that threatened to make me burst into tears. My eyes dried instantly. I was good at hiding tears. I should be; I’d had three years to get good at it.

Now that's a Danny Tozer line.

I wasn’t really talking; I was just making words come out of my mouth. Still grimacing at the pain in my head, I stood up. Looking around I felt a small measure of relief that K and I were the only ones in the math hall, and then I had to choke back what I knew was hysterical laughter. Had I not been totally psycho about the geometry test from hell scheduled for tomorrow, and had run back to my locker to get my book so I could attempt to obsessively (and pointlessly) study tonight, the Tracker would have found me standing outside in front of the school with the majority of the 1,300 kids who went to Broken Arrow’s South Intermediate High School waiting for what my stupid Barbie-clone sister liked to smugly call “the big yellow limos.” I have a car, but standing around with the less fortunate who have to ride the buses is a time-honored tradition, not to mention an excellent way to check out who’s hitting on who.

You know Zoey's deep because she... rides the bus to school. True working-class hero.

As it was, there was only one other kid in the math hall—a tall thin dork with messed-up teeth, which I could, unfortunately, see too much of because he was standing there with his mouth flapping open staring at me like I’d just given birth to a litter of flying pigs.

I coughed again, this time a really wet, disgusting cough. The dork made a squeaky little sound and scuttled down the hall to Mrs. Day’s room clutching a flat board to his bony chest. Guess the chess club had changed its meeting time to Mondays after school.

As you'll come to see, Zoey has a neverending well of sour loathing for nearly every living thing that crosses her path.

Do vampyres play chess? Were there vampyre dorks? How about Barbie-like vampyre cheerleaders? Did any vampyres play in the band? Were there vampyre Emos with their guy-wearing-girl’s-pants weirdness and those awful bangs that cover half their faces? Or were they all those freaky Goth kids who didn’t like to bathe much? Was I going to turn into a Goth kid? Or worse, an Emo? I didn’t particularly like wearing black, at least not exclusively, and I wasn’t feeling a sudden and unfortunate aversion to soap and water, nor did I have an obsessive desire to change my hairstyle and wear too much eyeliner.

Again, vampires are celebrities in this world.

“Zoey? Are you okay?” Kayla’s voice sounded too high, like someone was pinching her, and she’d taken another step away from me.
I sighed and felt my first sliver of anger. It wasn’t like I’d asked for this. K and I had been best friends since third grade, and now she was looking at me like I had turned into a monster.
“Kayla, it’s just me. The same me I was two seconds ago and two hours ago and two days ago.” I made a frustrated gesture toward my throbbing head. “This doesn’t change who I am!”

Because this is 2007 and not 2017, this is a gay metaphor, not a trans one. This is one of the reasons I wanted to do these books, it's interesting seeing how the priorities of woke (not that that term was very popular back then) have changed over the years. Kayla excuses herself to take a call from her boyfriend:

I watched her rush across the east lawn to the parking lot. I could see that she had her cell phone smashed to her ear and was talking in animated little bursts to Jared. I’m sure she was already telling him I was turning into a monster.

The problem, of course, was that turning into a monster was the brighter of my two choices. Choice Number 1: I turn into a vampyre, which equals a monster in just about any human’s mind. Choice Number 2: My body rejects the Change and I die. Forever.

As opposed to all those temporary deaths that go around this time of year. Again, vampires aren't undead here, at least not the ones everyone knows about.

The bad news was that I’d have to move into the House of Night, a private boarding school in Tulsa’s Midtown, known by all my friends as the Vampyre Finishing School, where I would spend the next four years going through bizarre and unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up.

These "bizarre and unnameable" physical changes will mostly consist of becoming stronger and sexier.

Great. I didn’t want to do either. I just wanted to attempt to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect older sister. I wanted to pass geometry. I wanted to keep my grades up so that I could get accepted into the veterinary college at OSU and get out of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. But most of all, I wanted to fit in—at least at school. Home had become hopeless, so all I was left with were my friends and my life away from my family.

Now that was being taken away from me, too.

I might sympathise more if most of this first chapter hadn't been spent shit-talking your "best friend."

High-pitched girl giggles flitted to me from the parking lot. Great. Kathy Richter, the biggest ho in school, was pretending to smack Heath. Even from where I was standing it was obvious she thought hitting him was some kind of mating ritual. As usual, clueless Heath was just standing there grinning. Well, hell, my day just wasn’t going to get any better. And there sat my robin’s egg-blue 1966 VW Bug right in the middle of them. No. I couldn’t go out there. I couldn’t walk into the middle of all of them with this thing on my forehead. I’d never be able to be part of them again. I already knew too well what they’d do. I remembered the last kid a Tracker had Chosen at SIHS.

It happened at the beginning of the school year last year. The Tracker had come before school started and had targeted the kid as he was walking to his first hour. I didn’t see the Tracker, but I did see the kid afterward, for just a second, after he dropped his books and ran out of the building, his new Mark glowing on his pale forehead and tears washing down his too white cheeks. I never forgot how crowded the halls had been that morning, and how everyone had backed away from him like he had the plague as he rushed to escape out the front doors of the school. I had been one of those kids who had backed out of his way and stared, even though I’d felt really sorry for him. I just hadn’t wanted to be labeled as that-one-girl-who’s-friends-with-those-freaks. Sort of ironic now, isn’t it?

Ironic, shitty and cowardly, either works.

Instead of going to my car I headed for the nearest restroom, which was, thankfully, empty. There were three stalls—yes, I double-checked each for feet. On one wall were two sinks, over which hung two medium-sized mirrors. Across from the sinks the opposite wall was covered with a huge mirror that had a ledge below it for holding brushes and makeup and whatnot. I put my purse and my geometry book on the ledge, took a deep breath, and in one motion lifted my head and brushed back my hair.

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really don’t? Now she was me—the familiar stranger.

She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair—long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma’s had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth—more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors.

Expositing about your protagonist's appearance while they look in a mirror is one of those hack-devices any decent writer will you warn you away from, up there with beginning a book with an alarm-clock going off, or a film with the main character going "Yep, that's me" in voice over. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the more detailed such a description is inversely proportional to the quality of the book it's in.

I’d always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn’t that my skin was suddenly so white . . . maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.

Zoey's dark skin being a sign of her supposedly superior virtue is very Current Year.

I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness . . . as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger . . . more barbaric.

Fun fact, the Cherokees were considered one of the Five Civilized Tribes during colonial times, due to their widespread and eager adoption of European customs, like dress or chattel slavery. Also, calling your own people "barbaric" is weird.

From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment—just an instant—I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother’s people rejoiced.

I wasn't aware the Cherokee were so down on vampires.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Damn dude, you work fast. I only suggested this to you a few hours before you posted.

Did she pronounce it "vampyre?" Casts? Did she really?

You know it's gonna be a fun time when the author decides 'i's are for pussies and place that bitch with a 'y'... Wait, didn't Dreadnought do that too?

I'll tell you this now, it's really hard not to quote every line of this book. Whereas Dreadnought's prose was generally workmanlike and boring, House of Night's writing is hilariously shit on a sentence-by-sentence basis.

I feel like we need to set up a counter in advanced to track just how many times across this story we have a line describing Zoey getting 'pop' from the fridge, I swear it's the only fucking thing this bitch drinks.

You know Zoey's deep because she... rides the bus to school. True working-class hero.

She doesn't ride the bus, she merely waits to observe the pesantry!

Because this is 2007 and not 2017, this is a gay metaphor, not a trans one.

Considering the contrast between how this author will describe hot male characters and hot female characters, I think it's less of a metaphor and more of a cry for help.

“Zoey Montgomery! Night has chosen thee; thy death will be thy birth. Night calls to thee; hearken to Her sweet voice. Your destiny awaits you at the House of Night!”

The Trackers are theatre kids or something because when we do get to the school, all the vampires talk mostly like normal modern day people.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Damn dude, you work fast. I only suggested this to you a few hours before you posted.

It helps I've actually read like, the first three of these fuckers. House of Night is not a series you forget easily.

You know it's gonna be a fun time when the author decides 'i's are for pussies and place that bitch with a 'y'... Wait, didn't Dreadnought do that too?

House of Night kind of feels like a Twilight fanfic Graywytch wrote in her spare time.

I feel like we need to set up a counter in advanced to track just how many times across this story we have a line describing Zoey getting 'pop' from the fridge, I swear it's the only fucking thing this bitch drinks.

Which is kind of weird for a vampire.

The Trackers are theatre kids or something because when we do get to the school, all the vampires talk mostly like normal modern day people.

If these books had any working sense of humour, we'd definitely have a Tracker who politely explains the whole deal in simple terms... then does the bullshit marking ritual and fucks off.

 

[Aloof Pessimism]

White-Kettle Shufflepunk's superpower is super speed reading through shitty books, apparently

vampyre finishing school. We heart you!

The book did not start yet and it's already pure cringe.

We meet the protagonist and I strongly dislike her right off the bat. Is she written like this on purpose? I thought protagonists are meant to be likeable and relatable. But I guess she is relatable and sympathetic to the author, which, like in Danny Tozer's case, is kinda concerning.

The book barely starts and we learn she looks down on just about everyone. Stupid family, stupid mega-conservative parents, stupid step-loser, stupid troll-like brother, stupid Barbie-clone sister, stupid teachers, stupid goths, stupid emos.

And she wants to dump her boyfriend who is a quarterback in the sports team because he celebrates his victory too much and might get fat in the future. So if I am getting this right, Zoey says she can do better than the guy half the chicks at school most likely want to date. Damn. Who is she gonna go for, the PE teacher?

Or maybe she'll blow the math teacher to pass, huh.

Zoey repeatedly mentions she is an outcast who just wants to fit in but acts like the hottest shit in the world. Cares a whole lot about everyone's appearance, including her own. And she has a car but prefers to loiter around those who wait for the school bus. Just to rub it in.

What a bitch. Not like her best friend is any better:

Oh, God, Zoey! What are you going to do? You can’t go to that place. You can’t be one of those things. This can’t be happening! Who am I supposed to go to all of our football games with?”

"Who am I gonna replace you with on such short notice?!"

Zoey keeps calling vampyres freaks and monsters, yet at the same time they are so common nobody pays them any mind. It is as if the book cannot decide whether it wants them to be super duper special or completely ordinary.

I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother’s people rejoiced.

Very similar to Danny's feelings when he turned into a 'girl'. Zoey is going to be a sadistic, sociopathic monster, isn't she?

 

[IridiumDragon06]

...but as written, this is like a teenage girl being horrified their friend is turning into... I don't know, a TikTok star?

...Based?

And yeah, in a better series, I'd hope that this was meant to be a set-up for the protagonist eventually going "Wait, maybe being a blood-sucking monster, a cruel parody of a human, who only relates to others in terms of what I can take from them...is bad?", because this is some high-octane teenage vapidity here.

Which, I mean, I'm not going to say that it's unrealistic, but it does make for the promise of a really grating narrator.

---

So, as a fun thought, because vampires are so broad of an archetype, what do people think of as necessary and sufficient vampire traits?

Original folkloric vampires, as I understand it, were really close kin to werewolves; they externalized rabies and porphoria and other general cases of the walking wounded, who were a threat to the living even though they should themselves be dead. They are repelled by salt, silver, sunlight, and garlic because all of those things are symbols of purity (or staving off infection, at least, in case of the garlic). It wasn't until much later that they became Pretty, and while there is still a strong theme of contamination in Bram Stoker's version, we can see that the roots are changing.

To me, modern vampires represent the fear of the charming sociopath, the traveling salesman serial killer, the Ted Bundy types. They are superficially charming, and being superficially charming they can rapidly attract both influence and victims, but they need to keep moving, leaving a quiet wake of destroyed lives behind them, until the mask drops and people recoil at how much harm they just never noticed. Vampires also prey on people, so you've got the strong themes of class and exploitation.

To me, vampires that don't need to regularly drain the blood from human victims are not vampires, they're generic Great Value brand superhumans. Having mysterious powers and fleeing from symbols of ritual purity are not necessary. But making your vampires obvious, via either sparkly marble-like skin or magic face tats which are totally not trashy, guys, they're wild and elegant and primal, is instantly a giant strike against them representing the lurking predator that hides behind a glib tongue and the trappings of social status. To me, making vampires physically monstrous, with either batlike features or prominent fangs or other attributes that mark them at a glance as Not Human And Definitely Predatory, they become less actually monstrous, because they lose access to the idea that they can appear like humans and thus lurk among them unseen.

I also like the idea of drinking blood as a hard filter on collective vampire humanity. Vampires must harm humans to exist, and they do not come from an era in which people can regularly lose a pint of blood and just walk it off free of weakness, sickness, and other ailments. A vampire, in order to stay alive, must harm others; therefore, every vampire which chooses not to walk into the sun (or otherwise end their existence) has already said "Better you than me." to collective humanity. And you can get a really good story out of a vampire that tries to diffuse their feeding and limit the harm they do, only for that harm to start adding up and the temptation to take shortcuts to grow. You can get into another strong optional theme of vampires there; addiction. There are a lot of good vampire stories where the vampires are pretty nakedly high-functioning junkies, who cheerfully burn every human connection they once had in order to get just another hit, until they start running out of people who don't know what they've become, and the mask starts to drop.

The House of Night vampires, from what I've seen, feel even dumber than Twilight vampires. I know barely anything about them yet, but the face tattoos and the showing up randomly in a high school during the day does not feel particularly vampire-y to me.

Let us see where Mr. @White-Kettle Shufflepunk 's second wild ride takes us!

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

To me, vampires that don't need to regularly drain the blood from human victims are not vampires, they're generic Great Value brand superhumans.

This is fair criteria, however, I'd like to raise a counter-example. In the excellent British supernatural drama Being Human, vampires don't actually need blood. At all. They can eat human food and drink, and abstaining from blood doesn't even make them age or whatever.

The thing is, every vampire, from the moment of their creation, is incurably addicted to blood. Blood-bags or animals do little to nothing to sate this craving, the blood is a mere medium for human life-force. Nothing else about a person's personality changes when they become a vampire, but the only thing that numbs the guilt of murder (aside from being a callous psychopath, which most vampires do sooner or later) is to keep drinking.

Many fictional vampires can at least say they prey on human beings to survive, much like any other beast of the field. A Being Human vampire, meanwhile, is just an immortal junkie looking for a fix. And even for the few that truly try to kick the habit, that same eternal life means relapse is basically inevitable. So, despite Being Human vampires lacking many of the common drawbacks of the condition, they still stand out as a particularly ugly and brutal modern take on vampirisim.

My point is, you can get away with a lot if you have the storytelling chops to back it up.

Unrelated, but the thing I find wild about Twilight vampires isn't that they sparkle--which is silly, but basically an exaggeration of the vaguely mineral visage popularised by Anne Rice--but the fact they don't sleep. To me, having a period of dormancy or at least inactivity is an important part of vampire lore.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

The thing is, every vampire, from the moment of their creation, is incurably addicted to blood. Blood-bags or animals do little to nothing to sate this craving, the blood is a mere medium for human life-force.

Hey, I'm good with both 'You need air to live.' and "I need my fix, man!" as 'need', especially since it's established that there's no harmless subsitute good, and that the craving will always be there.

Unrelated, but the thing I find wild about Twilight vampires isn't that they sparkle--which is silly, but basically an exaggeration of the vaguely mineral visage popularised by Anne Rice--but the fact they don't sleep. To me, having a period of dormancy or at least inactivity is an important part of vampire lore.

Hmm, that's interesting. Having the vampires symbolically die and rise again to fulfill their craving does get back to the folklore, and for vampires that have mystic powers, then the daylight sleep makes hunting them approachable, or at least possible. And now that I'm thinking about it, it fits well with the vampire-as-serial-killer, where the vampires kill sequentially, and not by tearing through and draining an entire village in an night. But it definitely feels important.

Another important point is the transmission of vampirism. The old versions treat it as generally infectious, and a lot of modern vampire media have settled on vampires needing to both drink someone's blood and share some of their own to turn them. But the infection model is old and deep, and it's another thing that is to me a straight "You're not a fucking vampire." if it's gone; there should be no such thing as someone naturally 'born' a vampire, even a nascent vampire. (I will ambivilantly and grudgingly accept people of tainted bloodlines doing fell rituals to corrupt themselves or their children.)

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Another important point is the transmission of vampirism. The old versions treat it as generally infectious, and a lot of modern vampire media have settled on vampires needing to both drink someone's blood and share some of their own to turn them. But the infection model is old and deep, and it's another thing that is to me a straight "You're not a fucking vampire." if it's gone; there should be no such thing as someone naturally 'born' a vampire, even a nascent vampire. (I will ambivilantly and grudgingly accept people of tainted bloodlines doing fell rituals to corrupt themselves or their children.)

You're probably not going to approve of my vampire project then

White-Kettle Shufflepunk's superpower is super speed reading through shitty books, apparently

There's a reason the Transhuman Earth Guardians don't pay me much.

When I figured that enough time had passed for everyone to have left school, I flopped my hair back over my forehead and left the bathroom, hurrying to the doors that led to the student parking lot. Everything seemed all clear—there was just some random kid wearing those seriously unattractive gang wanna-be baggy pants cutting across the far end of the lot. Keeping his pants from falling down as he walked was taking all his concentration; he wouldn’t even notice me.

I'm no fan of baggy-pants, but man, pretty much every description of another human being Zoey gives us is just a string of petty insults. It's almost like the Casts noticed that books like Harry Potter often emphasise physical imperfection (Hermione's big teeth, Ron's gawky looks, Harry's untidy hair) but didn't realise that's mostly because those often stand-out the most, not because your narrator should be the meanest little shit around.

The moment I stepped outside the sun began to batter me. I mean, it wasn’t a particularly sunny day; there were plenty of those big, puffy clouds that looked so pretty in pictures floating around the sky, semi-blocking the sun. But that didn’t matter. I had to squint my eyes painfully and hold my hand up as a make-believe sun block against even that intermittent light. I guess it was because I was focusing so hard on the pain the ordinary sunlight was causing me that I didn’t notice the truck until it squealed to a stop in front of me.

I'm honestly shocked the Casts chose to make their vampires photosensitive.

Oh crap crap crap! It was Heath. I glanced up, looking at him from between my fingers like I was watching one of those stupid slasher movies.

To be fair to Zoey, slasher films were in a bit of a dire state in the mid-2000s

Over his shoulder I could see into the cab of the truck where Dustin and his brother, Drew, were doing what they were usually doing—wrestling around and arguing over God only knows what stupid boy thing.

#GuysRock.

I scowled at Heath.

“You’re drinking at school! Are you crazy?”

His little boy grin got bigger. “Yes I am crazy, ’bout you, baby!”

I shook my head while I turned my back to him, opening the creaky door to my Bug and shoving my books and backpack into the passenger’s seat.

“Why aren’t you guys at football practice?” I said, still keeping my face angled away from him.

“Didn’t you hear? We got the day off ’cause of the ass-kicking we gave Union on Friday!”

Dustin and Drew, who must have been kinda paying attention to Heath and me after all, did a couple of very Okie “Whoo-hoo!” and “Yeah!” yells from inside the truck.

Ah yes, those quintessentially Oklahoman exclamations: "Whoo-hoo" and "Yeah!" Never going to hear those anywhere else on Earth.

Heath tries to deny Kayla's claims that he's been cheating on Zoey, which of course gives him away because Kayla never mentioned that.

“What did you do, Heath?”

“Zo, me? You know I wouldn’t . . .” but his innocent act and his excuses faded into an unattractive open-mouthed look of shock when he caught sight of my Mark. “What the—” he started to say, but I cut him off.

“Shh!” I jerked my head in the direction of the still clueless Dustin and Drew, who were now singing at the top of their totally tonedeaf lungs to the latest Toby Keith CD.

Heath’s eyes were still wide and shocked, but he lowered his voice. “Is that some kinda makeup thing you’re doing for drama class?”

I'd honestly expect fake Marks to be pretty common. They're essentially symbols of this world's cultural elite.

“No,” I whispered. “It’s not.”

“But you can’t be Marked. We’re going out.”

“We are not going out!” And just like that my semi-reprieve from coughing ended. I practically doubled over, hacking a seriously nasty, phlegmy cough.

So, he couldn't be cheating on you then.

“Hey, Zo!” Dustin called from the cab. “You gotta lay off those cigarettes.”

“Yeah, you sound like you’re gonna cough up a lung or somethin’,” Drew said.

“Dude! Leave her alone. You know she don’t smoke. She’s a vampyre.”

Great. Wonderful. Heath, with his usual total and complete lack of anything resembling good sense, thought he was actually standing up for me as he yelled at his friends, who instantly stuck their heads out of the open windows and gawked at me like I was a science experiment.

“Well, shit. Zoey’s a fucking freak!” Drew said.

How dare Heath try to get his friends to lay off you!

Drew’s insensitive words made the anger that had been simmering somewhere inside my chest ever since Kayla had cringed from me bubble up and boil over. Ignoring the pain the sun caused me, I stared straight at Drew, meeting his eyes.

“Shut the hell up! I’ve had a really bad day and I do not need this crap from you.” I paused to look from the now wide-eyed and silent Drew to Dustin and added, “Or you.” And as I kept eye contact with Dustin I realized something—something that shocked and weirdly excited me: Dustin looked scared. Really scared. I glared back at Drew. He looked scared, too. Then I felt it. A tingling sensation that crawled over my skin and made my new Mark burn.

Power. I felt power.

One day, we'll probably read a book where the protagonist doesn't get off from instilling fear in the pathetic hooomans, but not today is not that day. Still, good to know Zoey has her first dot of Presence.

Drew and his brother proceed to book it in their truck, leading to Heath being thrown from the tray to the ground.

Automatically, I rushed forward. “Are you okay?” Heath was on his hands and knees, and I bent down to help pull him to his feet.

Then I smelled it. Something smelled amazing—hot and sweet and delicious.

Aww shit, Heath spilled hot chocolate all over himself.

“Zoey, I’ve really missed you. We need to get back together. You know I really love you.” He reached up to touch my face and both of us noticed the blood that smeared the palm of his hand. “Ah, shit. I guess I—” his voice closed off when he glanced at my face. I could only imagine what I must look like, with my face all white, my new Mark blazingly outlined in sapphire blue, and my eyes staring at the blood on his hand. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t look away.

“I want . . .” I whispered. “I want . . .” What did I want? I couldn’t put it into words. No, that wasn’t it. I wouldn’t put it into words. Wouldn’t say aloud the overwhelming surge of white-hot desire that was trying to drown me. And it wasn’t because Heath was standing so near. He’d been close to me before. Hell, we’d been making out for a year, but he’d never made me feel like this—nothing ever like this. I bit my lip and moaned.

So, Zoey and Heath have been getting physical for over a year, but Zoey still refuses to call him her boyfriend, but still gets pissed when he sees other girls. Remember this whenever she calls another girl a ho.

Zoey gets this close to giving Heath the bad kind of suck, but luckily, his bros return:

The pickup truck squealed to a halt, fishtailing beside us. Drew jumped out and grabbed Heath around the waist, and jerked him backward into the cab of the truck.

“Knock it off! I’m talking to Zoey!”

Heath tried to struggle against Drew, but the kid was Broken Arrow’s senior linebacker, and truly ginormous. Dustin reached around them and slammed the door to the truck.

“Leave him alone, you freak!” Drew yelled at me as Dustin floored the truck and this time they really did speed off.

Friends don't let friends be vampire-chow.

No! I wasn’t going to think about that now. And, anyway, there was probably some kind of rational explanation for everything, a rational and simple explanation. Dustin and Drew were retards—totally immature beer-brains. I hadn’t used a creepy new power to intimidate them. They’d just been freaked that I’d been Marked. That was it. I mean, people were scared of vampyres.

Not enough, as we'll see.

“But I’m not a vampyre!” I said. Then I coughed while I remember how hypnotically beautiful Heath’s blood had been, and the rush of desire I’d felt for it. Not Heath, but Heath’s blood.

No! No! No! Blood was not beautiful or desirable. I must be in shock. That’s it. That had to be it. I was in shock and not thinking clearly. Okay . . . okay . . . absently, I touched my forehead. It had stopped burning, but it still felt different. I coughed for the zillionth time. Fine. I wouldn’t think about Heath, but I couldn’t deny it any more. I felt different. My skin was ultrasensitive. My chest hurt, and even though I had my cool Maui Jim sunglasses on, my eyes kept tearing up painfully.

It might interest you guys to know that the Casts only decided to have their "vampyres" drink blood relatively late in the writing process. Not in the sense that they consumed something intangible instead, life life-force or emotions, but that they didn't need or want anything at all from humans. As I've said, I'm no vampire purist. I've enjoyed plenty of very divergent and unique takes on vampirism, but what the fuck even is a vampire if it doesn't even want to eat people sometimes? Ultimately, the Casts did decide to make vampyres require blood to live, as a "little nod to the original stories", which is a little like giving Thor a big fucking hammer as a sneaky reference to the original Marvel comics.

Also, despite being a social misfit who hates the phony, plastic world she's trapped in, Zoey is very keen to tell you all the cool clothes and accessories she owns.

I’m dying . . .” I moaned, and then promptly clamped my lips shut. I might actually be dying. I glanced up at the big brick house that, after three years, still didn’t seem like home. “Get it over with. Just get it over with.” At least my sister wouldn’t be home yet—cheerleading practice. Hopefully, the troll would be totally hypnotized by his new Delta Force: Black Hawk Down video game (um . . . ew).

As far as I can tell, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down was just a generic military shooter. Usually when people channel Jack Thompson, they at least pick something like Grand Theft Auto or Postal. This is like if I introduced a character who was meant to be into really gross, gory horror films, and they were watching... I don't know, Darkness Falls, or some other forgotten bit of PG-13 fluff.

I'm pretty sure we never actually meet Zoey's brother and sister. You can tell Zoey is a horrible main character, because when they were doing the graphic-novel adaptation, the writers felt the need to add a scene where protects her brother from bullies. Imagine failing so hard at making your protagonist sympathetic, the guys in charge of the shitty comic-book version have to invent new relationships and heroic moments for her.

I might have Mom to myself.

Stupid Mom, having other kids to take care of!

“Please let her understand,” I whispered a simple prayer to whatever god or goddess might be listening to me.

See, the problem with having read this before is that I have to restrain myself from pointing out all the stupid shit in advance.

She was in the family room, curled up on the edge of the couch, sipping a cup of coffee and reading Chicken Soup for a Woman’s Soul. She looked so normal, so much like she used to look. Except that she used to read exotic romances and actually wear makeup.

Do women normally wear makeup when they're lounging around the house reading Harlequin romances? It does seem pretty telling Zoey associates authenticity with trashy literature and cosmetics.

Both were things her new husband didn't allow (what a turd)

Yes, Zoey, I wouldn't have realised that a man who doesn't let his wife read or wear what she likes was a dickhead without your third-grade insults.

I swallowed hard. “Mama.” I used the name I used to call her, back in the days before she married John.

And you stopped calling her that... why? I know John's a stawman Christian, but what do those guys have against the term "Mama"? Or did John just think it was weird a thirteen year old girl was still calling her mother that? Because unless you're a southern belle, it kind of is.

“What is it, baby—” she began, and then her words seemed to freeze on her lips as her eyes found the Mark on my forehead.

“Oh, God! What have you done now?”

My heart started to hurt again. “Mom, I didn’t do anything. This is something that happened to me, not because of me. It’s not my fault.”

“Oh, please, no!” she wailed as if I hadn’t said a word. “What is your father going to say?”

I wanted to scream how the hell would any of us know what my father was going to say, we haven’t seen or heard from him for fourteen years! But I knew it wouldn’t do any good, and it always just made her mad when I reminded her that John was not my “real” father.

I'm kind of curious why the Casts chose to make John Zoey's stepfather, when, as far as I know, her bio-dad never comes into it at all. It's also interesting that she's the middle-child, rather than, say, the eldest, with her younger siblings being John's kids. Is it like when the Brothers Grimm made a bunch of the evil mothers from fairy-tales step-parents to try and make things less grotesque? Or did we just want to shit on Zoey's mother for marrying a dude Zoey didn't approve of?

It's probably the last thing, isn't it?

“Mama, please. Can’t you just not tell him? At least for a day or two? Just keep it between the two of us until we . . . I don’t know . . . get used to it or something.” I held my breath.

“But what would I say? You can’t even cover that thing up with makeup.”

If people are scared of vampires (while avidly consuming media made by and starring them) you'd think there'd be a market for really strong concealer.

“Mom, I didn’t mean that I’d stay here while we got used to it. I have to go; you know that.” I had to pause while a huge cough made my shoulders shake. “The Tracker Marked me. I have to move to the House of Night or I’m just going to get sicker and sicker.” And then die, I tried to tell her with my eyes. I couldn’t actually say the words. “I just want a couple of days before I have to deal with . . .” I broke off so I didn’t have to say his name, this time purposefully making myself cough, which wasn’t hard.
“What would I tell your father?”
I felt a rush of fear at the panic in her voice. Wasn’t she the mom? Wasn’t she supposed to have the answers instead of the questions?
“Just . . . just tell him that I’m spending the next couple days at Kayla’s house because we have a big biology project due.”

I'm not sure what Zoey's asking here? She wants her mother to not tell her husband where she's gone... after she's already at the House of Night where it wouldn't matter?

“So what you’re saying is that you want me to lie to him.”

“No, Mom. What I’m saying is that I want you, for once, to put what I need before what he wants. I want you to be my mama. To help me pack and to drive with me to this new school because I’m scared and sick and I don’t know if I can do it all by myself!” I finished in a rush, breathing hard and coughing into my hand.

“I wasn’t aware that I had stopped being your mom,” she said coldly.

She made me feel even more tired than Kayla had. I sighed. “I think that’s the problem, Mom. You don’t care enough to be aware of it. You haven’t cared about anything but John since you married him.”

Her eyes narrowed at me. “I don’t know how you can be so selfish. Don’t you realize all that he’s done for us? Because of him I quit that awful job at Dillards. Because of him we don’t have to worry about money and we have this big, beautiful house. Because of him we have security and a bright future.”

It's hard to put into words the weird, staccato vibe the writing has here. Like, Dreadnought was crap and hackneyed, but it was a lot better at... aping competency than this:

Mom-Bot: DON'T YOU SEE OFFSPRING DAUGHTER, I VALUE OUR MATERIAL PROSPERITY AND SUBURBAND FACADE OF DOMESTIC BLISS MORE THAN YOU. THIS IS IS VERY A VERY ORIGINAL BEAT FOR SOMETHING WRITTEN IN 2007.

I’d heard these words so often I could have recited them with her.

Really? Those exact words? Okay, maybe John did replace his wife with a robot.

“No, Mother.

I love the image of Zoey trying to pour as much venom as she can into the word "Mother" like she's going for an old-school stage-acting thing.

he truth is that because of him you haven’t paid any attention to your kids for three years. Did you know that your oldest daughter has turned into a sneaky, spoiled slut who’s screwed half of the football team?

So, John's a hyper-controlling, ultra-religious tyrant... who's also okay with his step-daughter being the school-bike? Also, imagine the shit-show on Book Twitter if this was published today. Literally the only specific thing Zoey calls out her sister for is... having sex.

Do you know what nasty, bloody video games Kevin keeps hidden from you?

Anita Saarkesian: Origins.

No, of course you don’t! The two of them act happy and pretend to like John and the whole damn make-believe family thing, so you smile at them and pray for them and let them do whatever. And me? You think I’m the bad one because I don’t pretend—because I’m honest. You know what? I’m so sick of my life that I’m glad the Tracker Marked me! They call that vampyre school the House of Night, but it can’t be any darker than this perfect home!” Before I could cry or scream I whirled around and stalked back to my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.

This is like if the Disney Channel tried remaking American Beauty.

I hope they all drown.

That's a... weirdly specific wish, Zoey.

Through the too thin walls I could hear her making a hysterical call to John. There was no doubt that he’d rush home to deal with me. The Problem.

Racing home when you hear your step-daughter has a potentially fatal medical condition that'll turn her into a blood-drinking monster. The bastard.

Instead of sitting on the bed and crying like I was tempted to, I emptied the school crap out of my backpack. Like I’d need it where I was going? They probably don’t even have normal classes. They probably have classes like Ripping Peoples Throats Out 101 and . . . and . . . Intro to How to See in the Dark. Whatever.

I'd say thinking vampires need to taught to see in the dark was dumb, but that was literally true in Vampire the Masquerade so... it's still dumb.

No matter what my mom did or didn’t do, I couldn’t stay here. I had to leave.

In other words, there's nothing emotionally tying Zoey to her old life whatsoever, and thus her leaving it behind means nothing. Harry Potter may not have given a shit about the Dursleys (because they were vividly drawn arseholes) but he also didn't bitch and whine about going to Hogwarts, either.

The chapter's done, but I know how much you guys like shittily written parents, so here, one more:

At first glance my step-loser, John Heffer, appears to be an okay guy, even normal. (Yes, that’s really his last name—and, sadly, it is also now my mom’s last name. She’s Mrs. Heffer. Can you believe it?)

And people give Rowling shit for her names.

When he and my mom started dating I actually overheard some of my mom's friends calling him "handsome" and "charming." At first. Of course now Mom has a whole new group of friends, ones Mr. Handsome and Charming thinks are more appropriate than the group of fun single women she used to hang with.

Look, the only reason people drift away from their single friends after marriage is because their husbands are evil. That's just science.

I never liked him. Really. I’m not just saying that because I can’t stand him now. From the first day I met him I saw only one thing—a fake. He fakes being a nice guy. He fakes being a good husband. He even fakes being a good father.

That's nice, maybe it would've been good to actually see John's horrible parenting in action? He's supposedly ruined Zoey's siblings, yet all we've heard about her brother is that he plays mediocre video games, and the sister's great sin is that she's sexually active; which her supposedly super-religious, image-driven stepfather doesn't even give a shit about! Maybe if we actually saw Zoey's suffering, her constant bitchiness would feel more justified.

He looks like every other dad-age guy. He has dark hair, skinny chicken legs, and is getting a gut. His eyes are like his soul, a washed-out, cold, brownish color.

Like most Victorians, the Casts seem to believe that good people are gorgeous, and all bad people are ugly.

“Get thee behind me, Satan!” he quoted in what I like to think of as his sermon voice.

So, I spent most of my childhood in religious schools, both Catholic and non-denominational Christian. The staff, students, and families were actually a pretty diverse bunch in terms of religiosity, but we did have our fair share of wacko-fundamentalists. Not one of them ever talked like this, probably because they weren't three hundred fucking years old.

I sighed. “It’s not Satan. It’s just me.”

That's a distinction without a meaning.

“I told you that your bad behavior and your attitude problem would catch up with you. I’m not even surprised it happened this soon.”

I shook my head. I expected this. I really expected this, and still it was a shock. The entire world knew that there was nothing anyone could do to bring on the Change. The whole “if you get bit by a vampyre you’ll die and become one” thing is strictly fiction.

Then how did that myth even get started in-universe? Surely a more common misconception would be that the Trackers choose who becomes a vampire rather than just identifying them.

Scientists have been trying to figure out what causes the sequence of physical events that lead to vampyrism for years, hoping that if they figure it out they could cure it, or at the very least invent a vaccine to fight against it. So far, no such luck.

Given vampires basically control all media in this world, you'd think even suggesting such a project would get you tarred and feathered. Think about how controversial the idea of curing autism is, and times it by a million. Though, now I'm remembering the Peter Watts book where autistic people are descended from vampire rape-babies.

But now John Heffer, my step-loser, had suddenly discovered that bad teenage behavior—specifically my bad behavior, which mostly consisted of an occasional lie, some pissed off thoughts and smartass comments directed primarily against my parents, and maybe some semi-harmless lust for Ashton Kutcher (sad to say he likes older women)—actually brought about this physical reaction in my body. Well, hell! Who knew?

Good to know even Zoey's celebrity crushes are fucking awful.

“This wasn’t something I caused,” I finally managed to say. “This wasn’t done because of me. It was done to me. Every scientist on the planet agrees with that.”
“Scientists are not all-knowing. They are not men of God.”

The funny thing is, John's basically right, as we'll soon see. But this isn't how people like John talk about this sort of thing in real life. In my experience, people like John aren't stupid enough to outright say science is wrong. Usually they'll claim that their beliefs are totally supported by scientific study, but mainstream academia is too corrupted by [INSERT IDEOLOGICAL ENEMY HERE] to admit it. Consider how young Earth creationists will construct elaborate geological models for the Global Flood, or how genderspecials will claim biological sex was invented by slave-owners because some woman have unusually large clitorises.

I just stared at him. He was an Elder of the People of Faith, a position he was oh, so proud of.

To be fair, the People of Faith have won "most generic name for a religious group" seven years in a row.

It was one of the reasons Mom had been attracted to him, and on a strictly logical level I could understand why. Being an Elder meant that a man was successful. He had the right job. A nice house. The perfect family.

Ah yes, the ideal American, Christian family: a stroppy, passive-aggressive idiot, a promiscuous cheerleader, and... a boy with bad taste in video-games?

He was supposed to do the right things and believe the right way. On paper he should have been a great choice for her new husband and our father. Too bad the paper wouldn’t have shown the full story.

Again, the full story is sex and video-games. Somehow, Zoey is coming across more prudish than her religious step-dad.

And now, predictably, he was going to play the Elder card and throw God in my face. I would bet my cool new Steve Madden flats that it irritated God as much as it annoyed me.

The Casts really love their product placement. It creates a weird sense of temporal dissonance, since despite the series covering about a year of in-universe time, the characters reference works and brands that came out over seven years after Marked's original release.

I tried again. “We studied this in AP biology. It’s a physiological reaction that takes place in some teenagers’ bodies as their hormone levels rise.” I paused, thinking really hard and totally proud of myself for remembering something I learned last semester.

Then shouldn't this have happened when Zoey was eleven or twelve, when she probably started puberty? I can't decide if a tween Zoey would be less or even more annoying.

“In certain people the hormones trigger something-or-other in a . . . a . . .” I thought harder and remembered: “a Junk DNA strand, which starts the whole Change.” I smiled, not really at John, but because I was thrilled by my ability to recall stuff from a unit we’d been done with for months. I knew the smile was a mistake when I saw the familiar clenching of his jaw.

Man, I remember when junk DNA was the go-to explanation for bullshit in science-fiction. What's the current Phlebotinum du jour? Is it still nanomachines? Epigenetics? Gender-identity?

“I never said scientists are smarter than God!” I threw my hands up and tried to stifle a cough. “I’m just trying to explain this thing to you.”

“I don’t need to have anything explained to me by a sixteen-year-old.”

Well, he was wearing those really bad pants and that awful shirt. Clearly he did need some things explained to him by a teenager, but I didn’t think it was the right time to mention his unfortunate and obvious fashion impairment.

I love how the Casts desperately want us to think Zoey is a quirky, thoughtful misfit who's way too deep for the rest of the herd, but her internal monologue is indistinguishable from the mean girl villain in every high-school show. And they're still too lazy to even try telling us what's wrong with John's outfit.

“But John, honey, what are we going to do about her? What will the neighbors say?” Her face paled even more and she stifled a little sob. “What will people say at Meeting on Sunday?”

He narrowed his eyes when I opened my mouth to answer, and interrupted before I could speak.

“We are going to do what any good family should do. We are going to give this to God.”

They were sending me to a convent?

I was thinking more one of those abusive wilderness camps that drags you out of bed in the middle of the night, but either works.

“We are also going to call Dr. Asher. He’ll know what to do to calm this situation.”
Wonderful. Fabulous. He’s calling in our family shrink, the Incredibly Expressionless Man. Perfect.
“Linda, call Dr. Asher’s emergency number, and then I think it would be wise to activate the prayer phone tree. Make sure the other Elders know that they are to gather here.”

Are most fundamentalist, evangelical Christians (especially the kind in shitty books from 2007) especially fond of psychiatry.

"What! Your answer is to call a shrink who is totally clueless about teenagers and get all those uptight Elders over here? Like they would even begin to try and understand? No! Don't you get it? I have to leave. Tonight.” I coughed, a really gut-wrenching sound that hurt my chest. "See! This will just get worse if I don't get around the…I hesitated. Why was it so hard to say "vampyres"? Because it sounded so foreign―so final―and, part of me admitted, so fantastic. "I have to get to the House of Night.”

If only there was an adult vampire around who could make sure misguided parents don't keep their fledgling children from getting the help they need. Perhaps a vampire assigned to Track down children about to Change, who could make their condition easily identifiable with some sort of Mark.

"Zoey, surely it wouldn't hurt anything if you spent just tonight at home?”

"Of course it wouldn't," John said to her. "I'm sure Dr. Asher will see the need for a house visit. With him here she'll be perfectly fine." He patted her shoulder, pretended to be caring, but instead of sweet he sounded slimy.

I looked from him to my mom. They weren't going to let me leave. Not tonight, and maybe not ever, or at least not until I had to be hauled out by the paramedics. I suddenly understood that it wasn't just about this Mark and the fact that my life had been totally changed. It was about control. If they let me go, somehow they lose. In Mom's case, I liked to think that she was afraid of losing me. I knew what John didn't want to lose. He didn't want to lose his precious authority and the illusion that we were the perfect little family. As Mom had already said, What would the neighbors think―what will people think at Meeting on Sunday? John had to preserve the illusion, and if that meant allowing me to get really, really sick, well then, that was a price he was willing to pay.

John is so concerned about what having a Marked daughter would do to his image that he's... calling up everyone in his church and telling them about it? If all he cared about was his reputation, wouldn't the sensible thing for him to do be bundle Zoey off to the House of Night and tell everyone she was building houses for Nicaraguans or something?

Or kill her. That's an option too.

I wasn't willing to pay it, though.

I guess it was time I took things into my own hands (after all, they are well manicured).

Zoey is like if Harmony Kendall thought she was Allison Reynolds.

"Fine," I said. "Call Dr. Asher. Start the prayer phone tree. But do you mind if I go lay down until everyone gets here?" I coughed again for good measure.

"Of course not, honey," Mom said, looking obviously relieved. "A little rest will probably make you feel better." Then she moved away from John's possessive arm. She smiled and then hugged me. "Would you like me to get you some NyQuil?”

"No, I'll be fine," I said, clinging to her for just a second, wishing so damn hard that it was three years ago and she was still mine―still on my side.

She also had two other kids, but fuck them, I guess.

I’m going to remember this, I told myself sternly. I’m going to remember how awful they made me feel today. So when I’m scared and alone and whatever else is going to happen to me starts to happen, I’m going to remember that nothing could be as bad as being stuck here. Nothing.

You know, with how disinterested the Casts clearly are in Zoey's like pre-Mark, I'm wondering why it's taking us so long to get to Vampire Hogwarts.

 

[AFAB]

You know, with how disinterested the Casts clearly are in Zoey's like pre-Mark, I'm wondering why it's taking us so long to get to Vampire Hogwarts.

Maybe the Casts are trying to make Zoey sympathetic by showing her life is bad so that Vampire Hogwarts comes off as a welcome change to Zoey. If that's the case they're failing because Zoey is just an unlikeable shit.

I'm interested in this read-through, I can't wait to see how bad this book is. @White-Kettle Shufflepunk do you think this'll be better or worse than the two Dreadnought books?

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

I'm interested in this read-through, I can't wait to see how bad this book is. @White-Kettle Shufflepunk do you think this'll be better or worse than the two Dreadnought books?

Much, much worse, even if Dreadnought is probably part of a bigger problem, if you get what I mean.

 

[Aloof Pessimism]

This is already worse than the worst of either Dreadnought, lol. So bad it's... not good but very entertaining. Really, really entertaining. And we have just started

Any commentary is pointless at this point - every sentence is a joke. Nothing makes sense. Zoey is ridiculously bitchy and hates everyone for the pettiest reasons. Everyone thus far is like a bad actor fed with lines of bad dialogue.

I am not sure about you guys but this reads like a parody of itself to me. Like the author herself is trolling. My Immortal kind of thing. Parodying all the cliched fanfiction high school vampire stories and tropes.

But the author is serious.

And it's funny.

I didn't expect it to be this bad. I expected another SJW power fantasy riddled with plot holes and bland writing.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

I'm interested in this read-through, I can't wait to see how bad this book is. @White-Kettle Shufflepunk do you think this'll be better or worse than the two Dreadnought books?

You don't know how bad it gets, man.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

It's remarkable how these books manage to make the people they despise look so much better by comparison. In this universe, vampires have fucking Obfuscate and invoke glowing face tattoos by pointing and intoning. Fucking shit hell that's junk DNA. John is right and based; any 'scientist' claiming that vampirism is a natural phenomenon is in the pocket of Big Fang, and the correct thing to do is recognize that demons walk among you.

Are the People of Faith discount Mormons? I hope we see more about them; since this is already a supernatural universe, I want to hear about the potential opposition to the forces of darkness we see so far. The use of 'Elder' seems like it, but the random therapist seems like...well, like the author is too deep in her own cult of western liberal feminism to realize that other cults have different signifies.

It's barely worth pointing out at this point, but Z's whiplash from "Oh no, they're scared of me' to 'Ze blood is ze life!!!!' to 'It's good that they're scared!' is...a thing. A better book would have a moment of reflection that yes, the fear of others is justified, and that you'll presumably feel this same hunger if anyone, even anyone you actually like or care about, bleeds in front of you...but that would require the protagonist to care about, well, anyone.

It's almost certainly not worth pointing out (but I'm going to anyway) that Z went off on her boyfriend for drinking too much. Z is a fuck-mothering vampire.

And finally, it's a small thing, but "....wished so damn hard that it was three years ago and she [my mother] was still mine..." is...well, we have seen no indication that being a vampire is a good thing. The vampires apparently give no fucks if their potential neophyte gets locked in a basement to die of their curse, and again, they're fucking vampires. A parent being on a child's side is not about giving them whatever they want, it's about giving them what they need, and it sure looks like Z is pro-vampire just to piss off her Dad. If Z was leaning harder on "No, you need to listen to me, I will literally die if I don't go, there's case studies and everything." and being ignored, that would be something, but she clearly plans to run away and doesn't care about her family anyway, so why should the reader?

 

[M3xus]

I'll echo what folks here said: a vampire needs to drink blood, whether it's because they need it to live or they need their fix, or they're store-brand superhumans. I'll accept stupid shit like sparkly skin if it's shown the local flavor of creature of the night must harm to survive and the author has the writing chops to make it compelling. Monstrous features are fine, but I think it's better if they don't come out unless the mask is fully off. I'm a sucker for the monster forms representing inner ugliness.

One passage and I've already guffawed at the writing a few times. This is going to be fun.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

Still, good to know Zoey has her first dot of Presence.

Will we be going with Masquerade or Requiem for the WoD references?

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Oh wait, that's why the trackers speak weirdly. They're Malkavians!

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

Will we be going with Masquerade or Requiem for the WoD references?

Either or, but I think by the end you'll agree that Zoey is clearly a Daeva of the Circle of the Crone.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

So I sat on my bed and coughed while I listened to my mom making a frantic call to our shrink’s emergency line, followed quickly by another equally hysterical call that would activate the dreaded People of Faith prayer tree. Within thirty minutes our house would begin to fill up with fat women and their beady-eyed pedophile husbands.

The two genders. Makes reproduction kind of complicated.

My Mark would be considered a Really Big and Embarrassing Problem, so they’d probably anoint me with some crap that was sure to clog my pores and give me a Cyclops-sized zit before laying their hands on me and praying.

I have to assume passages like this are what happens when middle-of-the-pack-or-higher high school bitches try to write the weird girls they always picked on.

They’d ask God to help me stop being such an awful teenager and a problem to my parents. Oh, and the little matter of my Mark needed to be cleared up, too.

If only it were that simple. I’d gladly make a deal with God to be a good kid versus changing school and species.

Which is why you spent the last half-a-chapter ranting to us about how you'd rather run off to join the bloodsucking creatures of the night than live under the same roof as sex and video-games. Why is "changing schools" even on Zoey's radar? She seems to have hated everyone and everything at her current one.

I’d even take the geometry test. Well, okay. Maybe not the geometry test—but, still, it’s not like I’d asked to become a freak. This whole thing meant that I was going to have to leave. To start my life over somewhere I’d be the new kid. Somewhere I didn’t have any friends.

It's like the Casts found a list of "things teenagers care about" and blindly copied it into their book, which is even lamer when you remember that Kristen was a teenager at the the time.

No way was I going deal with clones of the step-loser on top of everything else. And, as if the People of Faith weren’t bad enough, the horrid prayer session would be followed by an equally annoying session with Dr. Asher. He’d ask me a lot of questions about how this and that made me feel. Then he’d babble on and on about teenage anger and angst being normal but that only I could choose how it would have an impact on my life . . . blah . . . blah . . . and since this was an “emergency” he’d probably want me to draw something that represented my inner child or whatever.

So, we have a strawman of a Pentecostal Christian who believes that science is just witchcraft with more numbers, and what appears to be a parody of a Jungian psychiatrist straight from the 1970s These are two very different kinds of stupid whose real-life counterparts don't tend to work together much. Why not make Asher a youth-pastor or something? It'd make more sense than a medical doctor apparently being down for an exorcism. This is like Dreadnought calling its baddies "neoreactionaries" and then making them a stew of every right-wing internet bogeyman it could cram in. I'd argue this is stupider, though, because at least all Garrison's ingredients were ostensibly right-wing.

I definitely had to get out of there.

Good thing I’ve always been “the bad kid” and was well prepared for a situation like this. Okay, I wasn’t exactly thinking about escaping from my house so I could run off and join the vampyres when I put a spare key to my car under the flowerpot outside my window.

A spare-key! Total teenage-delinquent or what?

I grabbed my backpack, opened my window, and with an ease that said more about my sinful nature than the step-loser’s boring lectures, I popped out my window screen. I put on my sunglasses and peeked out. It was only four thirty or so, and not dark yet, so I was really glad that our privacy fence hid me from our totally noisy neighbors. On this side of the house the only other windows were to my sister’s room, and she should still be at cheerleading practice. (Hell must truly be freezing over because for once I was sincerely glad my sister’s world revolved around what she called “the sport of cheer.”)

Having an athletic, fairly physically-demanding extracurricular activity, what a bitch. Why doesn't she just mill around inwardly shitting on everyone she knows while stringing along a drunken jock?

The gate didn’t even squeak when I cracked it open and inched out like one of Charlie’s Angels.

Is that really the sort of reference a kid Zoey's age would jump to first in 2007? I guess there was the movies, but I don't really associate the stuff in those with "stealth."

My cute Bug was sitting there where she always sat—right in front of the third door to our three car garage. The step-loser wouldn’t let me park her inside because he said the lawnmower was more important. (More important than a vintage VW? How? That didn’t even make sense.

You have a fucking vintage car, quit your bitching! Actually, where did Zoey get that? She's never mentioned having a job or anything, so did John pay for it? Seems pretty generous for an evil Step-Loser? Or is that just Bumblebee? He must be starting to miss Stan Witwicky by now.

Since when did I care about the vintage-ness of my Bug? I must really be Changing.)

You know, even Bella Swan was allowed to be unapologetically thrilled about the old truck her dad got her. Actually, I bet she's the whole reason Zoey has an old car, too.

I didn’t even glance in the rearview mirror.

I did reach over and turn off my cell phone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

Also, you're driving!

Like my Bug could read my mind it seemed to turn all by itself onto the highway that led to the Muskogee Turnpike and, eventually, to the most wonderful place in this world—my Grandma Redbird’s lavender farm.

That's a really long-winded and stupid way of saying "I turned onto the highway." What's even more stupid of course is that Zoey is postponing heading to the House of Night--her only hope of survival--so her grandmother can tell her what she wants to hear.

Unlike the drive from school to home, the hour-and-a-half trip to Grandma Redbird’s farm seemed to take forever.

Yes, that's how driving a longer distance works.

By the time I pulled off the two-lane highway onto the hard-packed dirt road that led to Grandma’s place, my body ached even worse than it did that time they hired that crazy new gym teacher who thought we should do insane weight circuits while she cracked her whip at us and cackled. Okay, so maybe she didn’t have a whip, but still.

You know how Classic World of Darkness vampires get weaker the more steps removed they are from Caine? Apparently YA "quirky-voice" works the same way. Dreadnought was 11th or 12th generation, Marked is a fucking antediluvian!

It made me glad that it was the end of October and it had finally turned cool enough for me to wear my Borg Invasion 4D hoodie (sure, it is a Star Trek: The Next Generation ride in Vegas and, sadly, I am on occasion a total Star Trek nerd) which, thankfully, covered most of my skin.

Wasn't TNG massively popular even among mainstream audiences, hence the ride in Vegas? You don't see Babylon 5 or even Deep Space Nine getting those.

My grandma’s house sat between two lavender fields and was shaded by huge old oaks. It was built in 1942 of raw Oklahoma stone, with a comfortable porch and unusually big windows. I loved this house. Just climbing the little wooden stairs that led to the porch made me feel better . . . safe. Then I saw the note taped on the outside of the door. It was easy to recognize Grandma Redbird’s pretty handwriting: I’m on the bluffs collecting wildflowers.

I touched the soft lavender-scented paper. She always knew when I was coming for a visit. When I was a kid I used to think it was weird, but as I got older I appreciated the extra sense she had. All my life I’ve known that, no matter what, I could count on Grandma Redbird. During those awful first months after Mom married John I think I would have shriveled up and died if I hadn’t been able to escape every weekend to Grandma’s house.

Naturally, Zoey's brother and sister (the former of whom was way younger at the time) don't figure into this at all.

For a second I considered going inside (Grandma never locked her doors)

For she always knew if thieves were in the area thanks to her Indian Hunches. Seriously.

but I needed to see her, to have her hug me and tell me what I had wanted Mom to say.

"Get to the House of Night before you die, you fucking imbecile!"?

It felt like years since I’d been here, even though I knew it had been only four weeks. John didn’t like Grandma. He thought she was weird. I’d even overheard him tell Mom that Grandma was “a witch and going to hell.” He’s such an ass.

So, naturally, he went to no effort to keep you from seeing her, even though you were only thirteen when he married your mother. To the point of seemingly giving you your own car.

Then an amazing thought hit me and I came to a complete stop. My parents no longer controlled what I did. I wasn’t going to live with them ever again. John couldn’t tell me what to do anymore.
Whoa! How awesome!

If the Casts are going to have Zoey be unreservedly thrilled about all this, why are they pretending she isn't?

The path up the side of the bluffs had always been steep, but I’d climbed it about a gazillion times, with and without my grandma, and I’d never felt like this. It wasn’t just the coughing anymore. And it wasn’t just the sore muscles. I was dizzy and my stomach had started to gurgle so badly that I was reminding myself of Meg Ryan in the movie French Kiss after she ate all that cheese and had a lactose-intolerance fit. (Kevin Kline is really cute in that movie—well, for an old guy.)

French Kiss came out in 1995, when Zoey would've been four years old. I'm not saying she couldn't have watched it at some point, but it feels like one of those reminders that this teenage girl was being mainly written by a fifty year old woman. Also, who the fuck cares about Kevin Kline right now?

And I was snotting. I don’t mean just sniffling a little. I mean I was wiping my nose on the sleeve of my hoodie (gross). I couldn’t breathe without opening my mouth, which made me cough more, and I couldn’t believe how badly my chest hurt! I tried to remember what it was that officially killed the kids who didn’t complete the Change into vampyres. Did they have heart attacks? Or was it possible that they coughed and snotted themselves to death?
Stop thinking about it!
I needed to find Grandma Redbird. If Grandma didn’t have the answers, she’d figure them out.

You already know the answer! Get to the House of Night or you'll fucking die!

She said it was because she hadn’t lost touch with her Cherokee heritage and the tribal knowledge of the ancestral Wise Women she carried in her blood.

It can't be because she's a smart woman in her own right. Nah, it's all down to her race. There's nothing wrong with having pride in your heritage (yes, even if it involves a Confederate-flag) or drawing strength from it, but I think you'll agree that that's not what we're talking about when it comes to the Redbirds. It is good to be reminded that ethno-narcissism has always been with us, I guess.

Even now it made me smile to think about the frown that came over Grandma’s face whenever the subject of the step-loser came up (she’s the only adult who knows I call him that).

Which kind of disputes her claim to the title.

Grandma Redbird said that it was obvious that the Redbird Wise Woman blood had skipped over her daughter, but that was only because it had been saving up to give an extra dose of ancient Cherokee magic to me.

Grandma Redbird is basically every stupid white girl's fantasy when they find out they're one billionth American-Indian. I also get the unfortunate impression she's disowned her daughter for marrying a white dude she didn't approve of. Charming.

As a little girl I’d climbed this path holding Grandma’s hand more times than I could count. In the meadow of tall grasses and wildflowers we’d lay out a brightly colored blanket and eat a picnic lunch while Grandma told me stories of the Cherokee people and taught me the mysterious-sounding words of their language.

"Mysterious sounding"? You're telling me Zoey's was everything but raised by her grandmother--a full-blooded Cherokee who's apparently very interesting in passing down her culture to her granddaughter--and she still calls her language "mysterious?" That's like a Hispanic kid who's super-tight with their abuela calling Spanish "mysterious." Or did Grandma Redbird only teach Zoey a few vocab words?

As I struggled up the winding path those ancient stories seemed to swirl around and around inside my head, like smoke from a ceremonial fire . . . including the sad story of how the stars were formed when a dog was discovered stealing cornmeal and the tribe whipped him. As the dog ran howling to his home in the north, the meal scattered across the sky and the magic in it made the Milky Way. Or how the Great Buzzard made the mountains and valleys with his wings. And my favorite, the story about young woman sun who lived in the east, and her brother, the moon, who lived in the west, and the Redbird who was the daughter of the sun.

“Isn’t that weird? I’m a Redbird and the daughter of the sun, but I’m turning into a monster of the night.” I heard myself talking out loud and was surprised that my voice sounded so weak, especially when my words seemed to echo around me, as if I were talking into a vibrating drum.

So Zoey already thought she was a divine being. Scans.

Thinking the word reminded me of powwows Grandma had taken me to when I was a little girl, and then, my thoughts somehow breathing life into the memory, I actually heard the rhythmic beating of ceremonial drums. I looked around, squinting against even the weak light of the dying day. My eyes stung and my vision was all screwed up. There was no wind, but the shadows of the rocks and trees seemed to be moving . . . stretching . . . reaching out toward me.

I'm really not sure why Zoey isn't an only child, because her siblings appear to have only spawned into existence after her mother married John. Also, I'm pretty sure so far John is the only member of her family's who's been given a name. Even Grandma Redbird doesn't have a first name.

There's something really schizophrenic about Zoey's backstory and characterization. She supposedly spent half her childhood going to Cherokee ceremonies with her lavender-farming grandmother, but she acts like any spoiled, basic-bitch suburban teenage girl. Grandma Redbird also only seems to exist in relation to Zoey. She doesn't seem to give much of a shit about her daughter and other grandchildren, and despite John supposedly being an ultra-controlling patriarch who doesn't approve of her at all, Zoey can fuck off to her place whenever she likes. She's written less like "Zoey's grandmother, who happens to be Cherokee" and more like a Native American Mr. Tumnus. An imaginary friend who lives on the other side of a magic portal.

I think this is the root of a lot of the Casts' writing issues. They want Zoey to be... I don't know, Daria, and a "typical teenage girl"--which in their minds means, stupid, petty, and materialistic--all at the same time. They want her to be a suburban everygirl, and a totally enlightened Cherokee kid. They want her to have a controlling religious stepfather for pity points, but don't want that to actually materially impact her in any way.

“Grandma I’m scared . . .” I cried between wracking coughs.

The spirits of the land are nothing to be frightened of, Zoeybird.

“Grandma?” Did I hear her voice calling me by my nickname, or was it only more weirdness and echoes, this time coming from my memory? “Grandma!” I called again, and then stood still listening for an answer.

I'm pretty sure Cherokee myth provides examples of malicious spiritual entities. For example, a race of cannibals who live underwater.

Nothing. Nothing except the wind.

U-no-le . . . the Cherokee word for wind drifted through my mind like a half-forgotten dream.

Wind? No, wait! There hadn’t been any wind just a second ago, but now I had to hold my hat down with one hand and brush away the hair that was whipping wildly across my face with the other. Then in the wind I heard them—the sounds of many Cherokee voices chanting in time with the beating of the ceremonial drums. Through a veil of hair and tears I saw smoke. The nutty sweet scent of piñon wood filled my open mouth and I tasted the campfires of my ancestors.

But not any of the white ones, they don't count. Zoey proceeds to pass out.

Surprise made me open my eyes. I was staring up at a light, which miraculously didn’t hurt my eyes. Instead of the glaring light of the sun, this was more like a soft rain of candlelight filtering down from above. I sat up, and realized I was wrong. The light wasn’t coming down. I was moving up toward it!
I’m going to heaven. Well, that’ll shock some people.

Me especially.

I glanced down to see my body! I or it or . . . or . . . whatever was lying scarily close to the edge of the bluff. My body was very still. My forehead had been cut and it was bleeding badly. The blood dripped steadily into a gash in the rocky ground, making a trail of red tears that fell into the heart of the bluff.
It was incredibly weird to look down on myself. I wasn’t scared. But I should be, shouldn’t I? Didn’t this mean I was dead? Maybe I’d be able to see the Cherokee ghosts better now. Even that thought didn’t scare me. Actually, instead of being afraid it was more like I was an observer, as if none of this could really touch me. (Kinda like those girls who have sex with everyone and think that they’re not going to get pregnant or a really nasty STD that eats your brains and stuff. Well, we’ll see in ten years, won’t we?)

One day, perhaps science will find a way to prevent the conception of children of the transmission of STDs.

I laughed, and it was amazing! I swear I could see my laughter floating around me like the puffy things you blow off a dandelion, only instead of being white it was birthday-cake-frosting-blue. Wow! Who knew hitting my head and passing out would be so much fun? I wondered if this was what it was like to be high.

Who wants to bet Zoey is a total narc?

Anyway, it's time for Zoey to receive a divine vision:

I looked back down the tunnel. Nothing there except dancing light. I turned to the wall and felt a jolt of electric shock. Whoa! There was a woman sitting cross-legged in front of the wall! She was wearing a white fringed dress that was beaded with the same symbols that were on the wall behind her. She was fantastically beautiful, with long straight hair so black it looked as if it had blue and purple highlights, like a raven’s wing. Her full lips curved up as she spoke, filling the air between us with the silver power of her voice.

Tsi-lu-gi U-we-tsi a-ge-hu-tsa. Welcome, Daughter. You have done well.

She spoke in Cherokee, but even though I hadn’t practiced the language much in the last couple years I understood the words.

"I visit my Cherokee grandmother constantly, but never bother speaking her language with her."

“You’re not my grandma!” I blurted, feeling awkward and out of place as my purple words joined with hers, making incredible patterns of sparkling lavender in the air around us.

Her smile was like the rising sun.

No, Daughter, I am not, but I know Sylvia Redbird very well.

"She brings me many worthy sacrifices."

I took a deep breath. “Am I dead?”

I was afraid she would laugh at me, but she didn’t. Instead her dark eyes were soft and concerned.

No, U-we-tsi a-ge-hu-tsa. You are far from dead, though your spirit has been temporarily freed to wander the realm of the Nunne ’hi.

“The spirit people!” I glanced around the tunnel, trying to see faces and forms within the shadows.

So, is this chick speaking Cherokee and this is just translation convention? If so, why are random words untranslated? Not not, why is sprinkling random Cherokee words in her dialogue like someone who won't shut up about their overseas trip ordering Italian food?

Your grandmother has taught you well, u-s-ti Do-tsu-wa . . . little Redbird. You are a unique mixture of the Old Ways and the New World—of ancient tribal blood and the heartbeat of outsiders.

Uh, I'm pretty sure there are plenty of kids in America who're part white, part Native, and have been for centuries.

Her words made me feel hot and cold at the same time. “Who are you?” I asked.

I am known by many names . . . Changing Woman, Gaea, A’akuluujjusi, Kuan Yin, Grandmother Spider, and even Dawn . . .

As she spoke each name her face was transformed so that I was dizzied by her power. She must have understood, because she paused and flashed her beautiful smile at me again, and her face settled back into the woman I had first seen.

But you, Zoeybird, my Daughter, may call me by the name by which your world knows me today, Nyx.

“Nyx,” my voice was barely above a whisper. “The vampyre Goddess?”

Yes, we're doing that thing where all goddesses from around the world are actually just the same chick under different names. It's one of those things people do to try to be clever and inclusive, but is actually both stupid and kind of offensive. The examples the Casts use here are particularly dumb. Allow me to sperg briefly on Greek mythology.

So, Nyx was the primordial Greek goddess of the night, one of the beings who emerged directly from Chaos at the beginning of time. These beings were generally less anthropomorphic than later generations of gods. Rather than ruling over the concepts they presided over, they literally were those things. Nyx wasn't just the queen night, but rather night itself. Gaea meanwhile was the Earth herself. In human terms, you could call them sisters. Definitely not the same entity. "Dawn" (more properly Eos) meanwhile was from a later generation entirely, a daughter of Hyperion and Theia, Titans born to Gaea and Uranus. In other words, she's Nyx's great-niece. Besides, how in the fuck can you try and claim a night goddess, a personficiation of the Earth, and the goddess in charge of the sun coming up are the same person? This is what happens when you pick a random deity from a mythology and try to say she's every female divinity ever imagined by man.

In truth, it was the ancient Greeks touched by the Change who first worshiped me as the mother they searched for within their endless Night. I have been pleased to call their descendents my children for many ages. And, yes, in your world those children are called vampyre. Accept the name, U-we-tsi a-ge-hu-tsa; in it you will find your destiny.

That kind of implies that Nyx less created vampyres and more adopted them. Also, how literal are we being with "descendants"?

Believe in yourself, Zoey Redbird. I have Marked you as my own. You will be my first true U-we-tsi a-ge-hu-tsa v-hna-i Sv-no-yi . . . Daughter of Night . . . in this age. You are special. Accept that about yourself, and you will begin to understand there is true power in your uniqueness. Within you is combined the magic blood of ancient Wise Women and Elders, as well as insight into and understanding of the modern world.

Please remember this description every time Zoey babbles about how shit ugly people are and 90s romcoms.

Zoey Redbird, Daughter of Night, I name you my eyes and ears in the world today, a world where good and evil are struggling to find balance.

So you've anointed Zoey to give evil a leg-up, got it.

“But I’m sixteen! I can’t even parallel-park! How am I supposed to know how to be your eyes and ears?”
She just smiled serenely. You are old beyond your years, Zoeybird.

That's only true if she still measures her age in trimesters.

Believe in yourself and you will find a way. But remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.

Do you think the Casts thought this was really deep?

Then the Goddess Nyx, the ancient personification of Night, leaned forward and kissed me on my forehead. And for the third time that day I passed out.

Next time, Vampire Hogwarts, at last!

 

[Aloof Pessimism]

I don't even make it past the first paragraph before I lose my shit laughing.

This is really a book? A trilogy of books? Not a fanfic?

You can't tell me this isn't a self-aware parody. Am I supposed to take it seriously?

If laughing is healthy then this book cures cancer.

Right. Okay. If bad writers usually project themselves into their main characters, the TERF author duo must have serious issues. Every single character in the book encountered thus far - and we have met a lot alongside Zoey - is meant to be despised and hated for the most ridiculous and petty reason.

Is this how the Casts view the world? How they see their neighbors, family, coworkers? I pity the poor people who have come into contact with them.

 

[IridiumDragon06]

...Where do I even fucking begin? Like, I can't even address how stupid and lazy the fake-Indian stuff is before we jump into a goddamn spiritual smorgasboard of contradictory bullshit.

And how the fuck does stuff like that work? None of the goddesses Nyx mentions have myths that refer to each other. Is she claiming that she was speaking to people through those visages before and they just didn't write down anything she said? (Fuck, probably, although this story doesn't seem to give men enough agency to make them pop-feminism villains). How the hell do you test that? What is the response to "No, you clearly are not those goddessses, you're a shape-changing demon that's stealing their form to make yourself look credible, and why don't we test this by looking at what your religons think of the walking dead, shall we?"

It's either dumb-ass zero-effort cliche, or its going out of its way to make Zoey look both malicious and retarded. Like, what is more likely; your grandmother leaves notes and has magic powers that let her know you're arriving, or she just always leaves notes, and you only see them when you show up? Is Zoey going to update her worldview around "Oh, it's not junk DNA, magic is real!"? Or was that whole song-and-dance just to score a cheap and stupidly-inaccurate dig at her stepdad, who has now been proven absolutely right that vampires are accursed servants of darkness?

...And I'm told that this series gets worse?

I don't even have anything clever say about this. It's just that dumb.