Christopher Pike

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.… (more)

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.… (more)

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!… (more)