Doing Friday on Saturday
My mother and I spent a good chunk of yesterday cleaning the entire apartment, which left me completely exhausted. I took a nap before dinner, and then after we ate, I laid back down. After about two hours of this, the hubby and I decided to just go on to bed…so we did. Which is why I did not update yesterday.
So…I picked up another vampire book from the library the other day. Too bad our libraries don’t seem to carry any of the newer YA fantasy books that I’d like to read, but oh well. The book I picked up was Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz. which is apparently the first in a series. It was not a bad book…but all the same, I didn’t think it was all that good, either.
The first thing I noticed after the first few pages was that the POV tends to wander from head to head several times per scene, and it’s not always clear whose head you are supposed to be in. One person will enter the scene, and begin talking to another person. You start reading about how Person #2 is internally reacting to Person #1, and at some point you realize that you are now in Person #2′s head. Then Person #3 joins the conversation, and now we start hearing what THEY are thinking. Now I had been informed, in no uncertain terms, by several different sources, that this is one of those things that you Don’t Do in Fiction. Period. After reading a book where it is done, I can understand why they tell you not to do it. It’s confusing. I don’t like having to backtrack in a story because the POV swapped from one person to another and I didn’t realize it. Seriously. Scene breaks! Don’t head-hop.
The story also took a long time to get going. About 65 pages into the book, and the only real significant thing that has happened is that a girl has been found dead. We’ve had a paragraph of description for every main character, and several dedicated to various locations around NYC. These did a pretty good job of painting the ritzy, upper-upper class culture that these characters live in, but they really didn’t create a mood, or add to the tension. And there were a lot of them.
Okay, and I know this is part of that subculture, but it irritates me when I have to hear all about the characters’ wardrobes every few pages. Also, the characters’ descriptions are never anything like how real people would describe themselves. They read like character bios from the inside cover of a manga. For example:
“Schuyler was startlingly pretty, with a sweet, heart-shaped face; a perfectly upturned nose; and soft, milky skin- but there was something almost insubstantial about her beauty. She looked like a Dresden doll in witch’s clothing. Kids at the Duchesne School thought she dressed like a bag lady. It didn’t help that she was painfully shy and kept to herself, because then they just thought she was stuck-up, which she wasn’t. She was just quiet.”
Just before this, we were in Schuyler’s head as she made a comment. Then we had a paragraph of description of what she was wearing. Followed by the above. Are we still in Schuyler’s head? I dunno, because I don’t think most people would describe themselves as “startlingly pretty”, call their own face “sweet”, and describe their own complexion as “milky”. (Unless, of course, they were completely stuck-up. But we’re told she isn’t). The last two sentences are the only ones that sound like they could have come out of Schuyler’s head…as a lot of teenagers see themselves as shy, and think that the world perceives them as stuck-up because they don’t talk to people. I believe that. I don’t buy the rest. Sorry.
And of course, it being a vampire book, we have to have the “big reveal” moment, when the main character discovers that 1) vampires are real and 2) she is one. (Actually, two of the main characters have to face this transition.) As far as reveals go, this one falls pretty flat. I mean, you the reader know that the two main girls are vampires long before they themselves figure it out. (If you’ve read the inside cover, you know before the story opens). So all of the shock, and disbelief, and denial that the characters go through when they figure it out rings false, or falls flat. This is one of the big problems with writing a vampire book right now, especially when the main characters of the story don’t know they are vampires. With so many vampire books on the market right now, it’s hard to believe that any intelligent youth embroiled in a vampire story would fail to realize that they are, in fact, in a vampire story. Such a reveal requires the characters to live in a world in which the current market of young adult vampire literature does not exist. Having the characters react with disbelief and shock makes them look idiotic instead of realistic. This is not the author’s fault, but it is something that could have been handled a little better.
Overall, I’m not all that enthused with this story…not enough to read the next book in the series. (Even the House of Night books were more interesting than this one, and I have enough issues with HoN to fill a whole other entry). I think, if I am going to explore any more current vampire books, I will pick either the Vampire Academy series or the Vampire Diaries series (which inspired Twilight, if I remember right).
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