Kristin Cast

Zoey’s soul has been shattered but, sadly, because my suffering has not ended that means everyone is running around trying to save her.

Meanwhile Stevie Rae is determined to make even worse relationship decisions than Zoey. That sounds like a near impossible task, but she is up to the challenge.

This book is… so very typical of the House of Night series.

We have a plot line that completely rests on Zoey even though it really should be about someone else – Heath. Heath is the one who died show more – but no, it’s all about Zoey and her shattered soul. Y’know, I’d be a teeny tiny bit of sympathetic towards her if every last death in this series wasn’t all about her. Heath just follows Stark and Stevie Rae as yet another death that was all about precious precious Zoey.

So with Zoey properly centred as all important, nearly everyone else (except Stevie Rae, which we’ll come to) runs around trying to help her. This involves, inevitably, cryptic clues, poetry and everyone spending far far far far far too long trying to interpret everything because Nyx is incapable of being clear and the rest of the cast don’t have two brain cells between them.

Of course all of this happens with Neferet and Kalona planning terrbad naughty things and with Neferet manipulating the Council to try and make them believe she’s still on team good guy. And Nyx, while happy to send cryptic poetry, happy to send prophecies, happy to have little conversations with Aphrodite and Zoey and is even willing to slap Kalona upside the head in the Otherworld. But she STILL cannot bring herself to send her precious High Council a memo, or informative bowel problems or anything. Seriously, you’d think they’d be due a text or something. A tweet. Smoke signals, carrier pigeons (or raven monsters) something, anything. Nyx is trolling, pure and simple.

But while we’re discussing Kalona let’s touch on the intolerable retcon and redemption we can see hoving into view with inevitable awfulness: Kalona is going to be redeemed. I know this is coming because we spent time in this book AGAIN saying how sad and tortured poor Kalona is with an added side dish of how terribad evil Neferet is. Yes, she is definitely promoted to biggest of big bads and directly connected to the Darkness more than Kalona (more than that later) and is even imprisoning and forcing the poor tortured evil Kalona. I’ve said before, this series is much much more invested in having a female villain. The last two books have tried very hard to downplay Kalona’s villainy while bigging up Neferet’s awfulness.

Now some sensible people would say that Kalona, a rapist and multiple murderer can’t possibly be redeemed. To which I say, oh sensible person why are you even reading this book?!

I don’t even know if it’s worth even poking this damn plot. I mean Zoey goes to the Otherland with her shattered soul and puts it together. I’d like to say that this was an interesting story in which Zoey confronted all the different aspects of her personality and ritually murdered each terrible one but that would be a lie – we have three bits which wave and lo, done. There’s no conflict or development. Zoey goes form “waaah I can’t put my soul together” to “ok putting my soul together now” by just… trying harder.

Most of the plot is consumed by the dullness of Stevie Rae’s love life and the attempt to portray some desperate conflict with the House of Night which basically involves Stevie Rae occasionally meeting people, losing all patience with them within seconds and without them really saying anything and then storming out. It’s like the authors really want to portray her as getting sick of the establishment and storming out – but doesn’t have the patience to actually write the storyline because, really, it’s all about the love life

Stevie Rae has looked at the hot trainwreck mess of Zoey’s relationship and said that she can totally trump it (but probably with more folksy aphorisms because the way she speaks is so terrible I think the whole state of Oklahoma should declare war on the Casts. Or, at least, the book should come with a Gibberish Hillbilly to English dictionary). Yes, her imprint with Rephaim the evil bird monster has turned into a full blown romance. Of course, this being a House of Night book we can’t possibly have just one love interest for our pseudo-protagonist – so she’s already being followed around by the electric Red Fledgling Dallas (so called because he has absolutely no personality at all but instead has a shiny special magic power which kind of makes up for not having a personality right?).

Like her precious Zoey she decides the best way to deal with a love triangle is to sneak around behind the back of your boyfriend while you establish a relationship elsewhere. Of course, this would make her an utterly terrible person so, in proper House of Night fashion he transforms into an utter monster so Stevie Rae manages to keep on being the good guy. It’s very very helpful that the love interests in this book are always willing to start mining to the depths so the protagonists can cling to their moral high ground.

This may also explain why they’re attracted to the most evil possible guys around. Zoey got her redeemed rapist (aaargh, why do I even have to type that phrase?) who has pretty much set himself up as her one and only - so Stevie Rae decides she’s going to fall in love with and bond Rephaim, the inhuman, murdering Raven Monster

I just can’t wait until the next book when, if we’re following Zoey’s patter, Stevie Rae declares everyone judgmental meanings for not accepting her super evil love interest as a good guy.

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Miranda
Mr. Bronson

Burned, by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast, the seventh in the House of Night Series, is a terrible book. In the sixth book, Zoey Redbird, the main vampyre character, watches Heath, a close human friend, die, and her soul is shattered. Her body stays in the real world, but the broken bits of her soul flee to the Otherworld. If she cannot put the pieces together, she will remain in the Otherworld forever. The balance of good and evil in the House of Night starts to collapse show more without Zoey. Her friends, desperate to get her back, travel to a Scottish island where an ancient vampyre queen and her Warrior (a combination of lover and guardian) explain to Stark, Zoey’s Warrior, what he must do to travel to the Otherworld and save Zoey.
Stevie Rae, a friend of Zoey’s, has problems of her own. She is imprinted with a Raven Mocker, a son of evil, and she is unsuccessfully attempting to hide him from her fellow vampyres, especially her boyfriend, Dallas. Her suspicious behavior attracts attention, and they are found out.
Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Get ready; I have a lot of complaints. There is too much plot for such a small book. The authors don’t have room to explain things, and there were so many complicated twists and turns to explain. Also, there were so many separate points of view-- Zoey in the Otherworld, Stark trying to help her, Stevie Rae, Rephaim the Raven Mocker -- that the book was confusing and jumbled. I was a bit mystified about much of Stark’s journey into the Otherworld. Changes and developments were abrupt and didn’t fit in to the previous action much of the time. There wouldn’t have been space for all the action even if the book weren’t crowded with so much…
Boy Drama. God! Even in the previous books, which I liked much better than this one, there was way too much of it. Zoey is always dating at least two guys and moaning on about the confusion of her love life. Possibly the most annoying thing about this is that the story of boy drama runs right alongside the story of a world being overcome with evil and vampyres and magic and such, as though they are of equal importance. Sure, I get that the authors are trying to show that inside, the characters are just normal people, but seriously, a book about the balance of good and evil in the vampyre world shouldn’t spend at least half of its pages on run-of-the-mill adolescent whining. Also, if we have to bear all the love-life agony, couldn’t it at least be normal love-life agony? Having the main character be in love with a human, an undead vampyre, and immortal Evil (Kalona) all at once does not show the humanity and normalness within. It’s over the top, unrealistic (even for a world of vampyres!) and mooshy-gooshyingly sickening.
The last thing I hated was the dialogue. No one, no one, talks like the characters in this book! Stevie Rae may have an accent, but that doesn’t mean she needs to talk like a complete idiot! Of course, since the character’s conversations sound completely moronic and fake, and the authors took no time to describe them omnisciently, they don’t exactly come across as deep, 3-dimensional characters. Their emotions seem very strange: It seems they are always over-reacting or not reacting enough. Stevie Rae quite calmly describes her encounter with the White Bull, the representation of evil itself, over the phone to another character without a single swear while having nearly bled to death just a minute before, but Dallas flies into a rage, embraces Darkness (evil), and attempts to murder Stevie Rae and Rephaim after only finding out that Stevie Rae has imprinted with him. She and Rephaim aren’t even in love yet!
As you can see, I hated everything about Burned: its plot, its characters (I even hated the title, as there is never any mention of fire, literally or metaphorically, so it is completely irrelevant) and I obviously do not recommend it to anyone. P.C. Cast and Kristin did O.K., I guess, with the previous books in the series, but they failed abysmally with their seventh. It is confusing, shallow, foolish, and definitely not worth reading! show less

Ugh, what a paint-by-numbers attempt at teen vampire romance. A cardboard version of Bella Swan is sent to a Wiccan Vampire Hogwarts, where she learns she has more magical goddess gifts than anyone but a Mary Sue has rights to. What's off-putting about this book? The flat-toned writing. The way the character becomes a dithering idiot in the presence of any attractive male. The juxtaposition of contemporary American slut-shaming ("you nasty ho bag") and a premise that sanctifies femininity, show more sensuality, bloodlust, and desire. The hodge-podge of mythological, native, and spiritual motifs (also the ways that "our vampires are different!) muddy the world's "flavour" so much that it's just an unsavoury pile of mis-matched references.

Paranormalcy (Kiersten White) was better. And that's saying a lot. show less

Like I said, the basic idea behind this book isn't original. "Special schools for special people" can be found all throughout young adult and children's literature. The world the authors have created is interesting, although I'm not sure how well it would hold up if more details were given. What I mean is, human beings are frightened of vampyres. However, vampyres are so insanely popular in the arts that all the really well-known people in any area (painting, acting, etc.) tend to be show more vampyres. Vampyres like Aphrodite help prevent major disasters (Aphrodite tries to hide her visions, but, when she can't, the information from her visions helps prevent things like plane crashes and more). I'm sure there are vampyres with other abilities that the world at large finds useful. There are rules against vampyres feeding willy nilly from humans. And yet, despite all of the good things vampyres do for people, their popularity, and all the rules they have protecting human beings, they're still feared. It works from afar, but I'm not sure how cohesive it would all be if the Casts tried to create a fuller picture of the outside world. However, it looks kind of like they're going to keep the focus on the House of Night and vampyres, so maybe that won't ever be a problem for them.

While I liked the book as a whole, it kind of bothered me how neatly everything came together for Zoey, especially since she seemed to have such bad taste in friends and boyfriends in her human life. As a human, her best friend was an airhead who was trying to steal her almost-boyfriend (Zoey always calls him that, as though to distance herself from him, but it really just makes her seem wishy washy - it's obvious Heath isn't going to change, and you already think he's lacking in brain cells, so just dump him already, Zoey!). Her almost-boyfriend cheated or almost-cheated on her with her best friend and was slowly killing all his brain cells with alcohol and drugs. After she's Marked, Zoey instantly ends up with a crew of nice, trustworthy friends who don't act the slightest bit jealous that she's obviously meant for great things and has Erik Night, the hottest guy at the school, chasing after her. The only remaining sign of her previously iffy taste in people (other than that Heath continues to be a problem) is her decision to be with Erik Night despite the little things that prick her attention - that he was with Aphrodite for so long despite her obvious meanness and selfishness and that he didn't seem to have any problems with Aphrodite drugging a human guard.

Near the end of the book, when Neferet makes Zoey the new leader of the Dark Daughters, Zoey finds herself wondering why she ever felt she couldn't tell Neferet everything. My theory, which Aphrodite's final words seem to support, is that Neferet and other mature vampyres are involved in whatever it is that makes fledgling vampyres that appeared to die in the Change turn into something red-eyed and evil. Zoey didn't see the first third former die, but she did see the second - she sees Neferet give him something to drink, something that supposedly makes his death less painful, and she's told that Neferet is always there for the fledglings who die.

At the time, all of these things seem like the activities of someone who's trying to help fledglings with inevitable death, but what if the stuff she gave them to drink turned them into something else? What if Neferet is always with those who reject the Change just so that she can help them become true monsters? There have been several times when Neferet has gone cold and scary, and Zoey always brushes those moments off, but what if there's something more to them? After years of being sexually abused by her father, Neferet may not have many reasons to like humans, so maybe she's working against them while appearing to try to help vampyres and humans live in harmony.

Unrelated to all of that, I wonder: what's with the popularity of facial tattoos lately? Pretty facial tattoos also came up in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, and I'm sure they've come up in other books I've read recently. I suppose that when/if all of these things are made into movies, the facial tattoos will make for some lovely visuals.

Again, unrelated to all of that: I wonder if church groups have been slamming this series? The only organized religion (other than all the Nyx worship) that comes up in this book is the People of Faith, who make me think of the people who make their kids burn Harry Potter books and Pokemon stuff.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less