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Christopher Pike

Author of Human Urges, Fatal Consequences

149+ Works 25,958 Members 435 Reviews 66 Favorited

About the Author

Christopher Pike is the pseudonym of Kevin Christopher McFadden, one of America's most popular young adult fiction writers. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on November 12, 1954, but grew up in Los Angeles, California. He took on various jobs before writing Slumber Party, Weekend, and Chain show more Letter, all of which became bestsellers. His other works include The Last Vampire series; the Final Friends trilogy; The Lost Mind; Witch; Whisper of Death; Alosha; The Yanti; Bury Me Deep; and Fall into Darkness. He also writes the children's series Spooksville and adult novels including Sati; The Season of Passage; The Listeners; The Cold One; The Blind Mirror and Falling. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Series

Works by Christopher Pike

Human Urges, Fatal Consequences (1998) 1,671 copies
Remember Me (1989) 985 copies
The Last Vampire (1994) 709 copies
The Midnight Club (1994) 656 copies
Chain Letter (1986) 585 copies
The Eternal Dawn (2010) 525 copies
The Season Of Passage (1992) 525 copies
Witch (1990) 521 copies
The Shadow of Death (2011) 517 copies
Weekend (1986) 509 copies
Bury Me Deep (1991) 504 copies
Black Blood (1994) 497 copies
Scavenger Hunt (1989) 484 copies
Sati (1990) 446 copies
Red Dice (1995) 444 copies
The Immortal (1993) 428 copies
Whisper Of Death (1991) 421 copies
Fall Into Darkness (1990) 415 copies
The Return (1994) 415 copies
Spellbound (1988) 415 copies
Die Softly (1991) 409 copies
Phantom (1996) 402 copies
Monster (1992) 400 copies
Evil Thirst (1996) 397 copies
Slumber Party (1985) 385 copies
Creatures of Forever (1996) 377 copies
Last Act (1988) 372 copies
See You Later (1990) 366 copies
The Starlight Crystal (1996) 355 copies
The Last Story (1995) 353 copies
Ancient Evil (1992) 352 copies
The Party (1988) 349 copies
Master of Murder (1992) 343 copies
Road To Nowhere (1993) 341 copies
The Graduation (1989) 330 copies
Gimme A Kiss (1988) 321 copies
The Dance (1988) 315 copies
The Eternal Enemy (1900) 292 copies
The Cold One (1995) 288 copies
The Listeners (1994) 274 copies
The Sacred Veil (2013) 273 copies
The Lost Mind (1995) 269 copies
The Wicked Heart (1900) 261 copies
Final Friends Trilogy (1993) 236 copies
Alosha (2004) 233 copies
Falling (2007) 221 copies
The Visitor (1995) 209 copies
The Tachyon Web (1986) 208 copies
The Star Group (1997) 163 copies
The Blind Mirror (2003) 163 copies
The Secret of Ka (2010) 161 copies
The Secret Path (1995) 159 copies
Execution of Innocence (1997) 157 copies
Witch World (2012) 141 copies
The Hollow Skull (1998) 131 copies
The Grave (1999) 130 copies
The Shaktra (2005) 124 copies
Magic Fire (1998) 120 copies
Tales Of Terror #1 (1996) 109 copies
Red Queen (Witch World) (2014) 105 copies
The Yanti (2006) 96 copies
The Haunted Cave (1995) 95 copies
Aliens in the Sky (1996) 92 copies
The Howling Ghost (1995) 88 copies
Strange Girl (2015) 85 copies
Last Vampire: Bks. 1 & 2 (1997) 80 copies
Black Knight (Witch World) (2014) 74 copies
Tales Of Terror #2 (1998) 71 copies
The Cold People (1996) 68 copies
The Witch's Revenge (1996) 59 copies
The Wishing Stone (1996) 56 copies
The Hidden Beast (1996) 48 copies
The Dark Corner (1996) 48 copies
The Wicked Cat (1996) 46 copies
The Deadly Past (1996) 41 copies
The Evil House (1996) 36 copies
Getting Even (1750) 33 copies
Invasion of the No Ones (1997) 27 copies
Night of the Vampire (1997) 26 copies
Time Terror (1996) 26 copies
The Thing in the Closet (1997) 24 copies
The Dangerous Quest (1997) 18 copies
The Creepy Creature (1998) 17 copies
Return of the Dead (1997) 16 copies
The Witch's Gift (1998) 12 copies
Final Friends Volume 1 (2011) 10 copies
Phone Fear (1998) 8 copies
Sotto accusa (1997) 4 copies
Final Friends Volume 2 (2011) 3 copies
Gimme a kiss 2 copies
La nuit des vampires (1999) 1 copy
Spook city 1 copy
La falaise maudite (1998) 1 copy
Alptraum im Paradies (1999) 1 copy
La noche del vampiro (1999) 1 copy

Associated Works

Thirteen: 13 Tales of Horror by 13 Masters of Horror (1991) — Contributor — 378 copies
666: Number of the Beast (2007) — Contributor — 119 copies

Tagged

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Sci Fi with "crystal" in the title in Name that Book (May 2016)

Reviews

3.5 stars. Sita is back, with the newly-created vampire Joel, the FBI agent who was hunting down the serial killer in the previous book. This one opens immediately at the end of the last one, with Sita and Joel needing to escape a very tightly wound dragnet that has closed around them. Joel tries to speak to his colleagues, but he is immediately taken into custody, and Sita has to escape on her own. The first chapter is forty pages long and extremely action packed, so be prepared!

Joel is taken to an underground bunker to be studied, and Sita is trying to figure out how to rescue him. Once she gets in, she realizes that she has been betrayed by a person from her past, and it becomes a struggle of wills as to who will escape - and survive.

I enjoyed this a lot more than book #2, perhaps because it adds to the mythos surrounding Sita and her five thousand year life. Here, Sita recalls a time in medieval Italy when she met a young priest aspiring to recreate the blood of Jesus via alchemy. She fell in love with him (Arturo) and allowed him to experiment with her blood, until things went pear-shaped. She thought she'd disposed of Arturo via the Inquisition, but unfortunately she didn't. I liked the addition of the Catholic mythology to the Hindu-inspired spirituality of Sita, and the alchemy twist was pretty ingenious. It didn't hold up quite as well in present day, but it was an interesting path nonetheless. There is a deux es machina ending to allow Sita to escape, which is also more WTF than sensible, but hey! At least the explanation is somewhat plausible: it seems that final infusion of Yaksha's blood from the last book has given Sita a lot of new powers.

Arturo knows one of Sita's weak points: the loss of her child. In exchange for her blood, he offers her the chance to become a mother again, which is something she finds very tempting. At the end of this book, she tries again to transform herself into a mortal being. Was she successful? We'll find out in Book #4!

One final note: time is flying by at warp speed; apparently only two months have elapsed since the start of Book #1. Maybe it seems longer to me because we're reading only one book a year? IDK; I find as I get older, I've lost all sense of time passing.
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½
 
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eurohackie | 5 other reviews | Nov 11, 2023 |
The last of this year's Halloween readalongs with Marian. Unfortunately, I found it to be a bit of a low note on which to end our annual trip down memory lane, though Pike definitely writes better vampires (even dumb vampires) than the SVH ghosties ever could.

2.5 stars rounded up. My main issue with this book was the antagonist, Eddie. He's way too powerful, but doesn't have the personality or background to match it. At least in the first book, Yaksha was an interesting rival for Sita. Eddie is just gross. The first half of the book is very violent, and Sita spends most of her time wondering how the hell she's supposed to defeat this guy. I also really hated that Ray was basically dispatched as soon as was possible, given that he is likely a reincarnation of Ramna, Sita's husband. That seemed unnecessarily cruel. The story picked up for me about halfway through, when Sita rescues what remains of Yaksha and delves back into the spiritual themes of the novel in her pursuit of how to kill this new foe.

I read The Last Vampire over a year ago and unfortunately lost quite a bit of the backstory, so it was nice to have a refresher and a resurfacing of Krishna (and some of Sita's past) in this story. I enjoyed her history far more than her current battles with Eddie, the police, and Joel the FBI agent.

Unfortunately, Sita goes back to being unsure of herself and her tactics and basically gives up during the Final Battle here, which made for a majorly anticlimactic ending. And what was the point of turning Joel? He is basically a complete bystander. I see from the blurb of the next book that his fate is likely to be the same as Ray's in this one, which - ugh. Why should I care?

I think Pike is at his best in this series when he is worldbuilding and exploring the nooks and crannies of a 50-century-long life. The sequel series turns more fantasy, and for good reason: the idea of basically having the same fight over and over again gets really old, really fast. I don't have high hopes for Book #3 at this point.
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½
 
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eurohackie | 9 other reviews | Nov 11, 2023 |
I'm pretty sure I've read this before...

I loved the way Pike used these kids and a great story between them to tell the mini-stories that he did. It was pretty genius. I don't think this will stay with me as long as some of the other ones I've read, but I really enjoyed my time reading this.
 
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Danielle.Desrochers | 13 other reviews | Oct 10, 2023 |
Christopher Pike excelled in entertaining thrillers for older young adults who were a bit more worldly than those portrayed by paramours like the popular R. L. Stine. That’s no slam on Stine, I’m simply making a distinction between his brand, which can also be enjoyable, and Pike’s.

Read today by an adult, you can add nostalgia to the mix. Released in 1991, Bury Me Deep is a very fun read, and would make a great time at the beach for anyone looking to combine teenage thrills with the nostalgia of late teens whose growing pains involved a few beers, and whether to have sex and when, rather than trying to decide what pronoun they’d like others to use when addressing them, or being so PC offended by statues of revered figures in history, they become drama queens until they’re torn down, proving they never truly understood what Orwell’s 1984 was about.

This one starts out fun, with a trip to Hawaii for of-age Jean, who is joining her friend Mandy, and a beautiful girl named Michele that both girls know, but who has invited herself along. On the long flight over, Jean meets Mike, a sweet kid who promptly dies aboard the plane right in front of her. This tragedy happens immediately and is not a spoiler. This tragic event shakes up Jean, who feels a connection to Mike, even though they only spent a few minutes together on the plane. That connection may be a supernatural one, as Jean soon discovers.

You’d think Jean slept through this fun story from comments made by others about this book, but each nap is placed where it makes sense — jet leg from the flight, after a busy day ending at a club with two young men (Dave and Johnny) who are teaching them to scuba dive, etc. — and is barely a blip on the radar. There exists the possibility Jean is being influenced by Mike, who appears in her dreams, possibly trying to tell her something. It becomes so frightening — and dangerous, when she almost takes a header off the hotel balcony — that she actually avoids sleep any more than she must. The dead boy’s influence begins to affect her during waking hours, compelling her to take great and foolish risks underwater as well.

There’s a ton about scuba diving in this Pike entry. It borders on an info dump at first, but eventually becomes very pertinent, because two murders, not one, may have been committed. By someone. A boat that went down near Lanai and may have some serious loot on board may be a piece of the puzzle Jean needs to figure out in order to understand what’s happening to her, and the visions she’s having. But when she’s worried she may be taking Mandy’s boyfriend from under her nose without trying to do so, and there’s so much fun to be had both above and below water, how is she going to focus on Mike, who is no longer among the living? But with his connection to Jean, Mike might as well be alive, as Jean is soon to discover.

I sort of guessed part of this, but with a lot of different possibilities, Pike keeps the reader just unsure enough that the conclusion is both action-packed and thrilling. As another reviewer so astutely noted, Pike was different from others who wrote in this young adult thriller genre, in that he was able to paint the victim in a way that elicited sympathy in the reader, their loss as real as Jean’s when Mike dies on the plane. That tragedy however, kickstarts a fun and thrilling Christopher Pike novel that turns tender in its final moment, giving it that extra something missing in so many others in this genre.

Yes, it’s young adult, but if you can imagine yourself as 17 or 18 again, and put yourself back in these shoes, you’ll have a blast. I had great fun reading this, and find it one of the more memorable Christopher Pike stories. If you give this a try and enjoy it, I can also recommend the following by this author: Slumber Party, Weekend, Gimme a Kiss, Die Softly, Monster, and the really splendid, Fall Into Darkness. There was a touch of realness to Pike’s kids, even in the stories that had supernatural elements at the forefront (Monster), so not all of them had the kind of ending we’d like. This one I think does, despite a new death that brings even more teenage poignancy to the epilog. Highly recommended!
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Matt_Ransom | 8 other reviews | Oct 6, 2023 |

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Associated Authors

Maria Schmidt Translator
Brian Kotzky Cover artist
Vivienne To Cover artist
Franco Accornero Cover artist
Sanjulian Cover artist
Daniel Dos Santos Cover artist
Danilo Ducak Cover artist
Pablo Di Masso Translator

Statistics

Works
149
Also by
2
Members
25,958
Popularity
#801
Rating
½ 3.6
Reviews
435
ISBNs
907
Languages
7
Favorited
66
Touchstones
376

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