House of Night Series

Lies dieses Review auf Deutsch

Series: The House of Night
Author: P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Publisher: Atom (GB)
Price: 6.99 £ (9.30 € in Germany)
Source: bought (in English)/Library
Pages: 348
Books: 1.) Marked, 2.) Betrayed, 3.) Chosen, 4.) Untamed, 5.) Hunted, 6.) Tempted, 7.) Burned, 8.) Awakened

"Marked" is the first book of the House of Night-series which is basically about Zoey Redbird, a teenanger who has been 'marked' and is now turning into a vampyre fledglings. They go into a special school, the House of Night, that teaches them the basics about their new lives as vampyres. After about 4 years (if you don't die beforehand) you grow out of being a fledgling and become a full vampyre. The priestesses that serve the goddess Nyx have tattoos appearing of their skin but only after they "graduated" to a full vampyre, so it is very weird that Zoey has them appearing already now where she's still a fledgling - she later finds out that she has an affinity for all 5 elements: spirit, water, fire, earth and air which makes her to a "priestess in training".
In the first book, it's all about finding friends: Stevie Rae, Erin, Shaunee and Damien. There is also another "priestess in training" at the House of Night, Aphrodite, who can be called a selfish bully and she is the leader of the Dark Daughters, a traditional school group that makes its own rituals for the goddess Nyx. With Zoey having an affinity for all five elements, Aphrodite is forced to invite her to the Dark Daughters and accidently summons evil spirits during a ceremony at Samhain (=Halloween), and Zoey has to fight them to save her human ex boyfriend. Wether she'll be able to make it and if she can bring Aphrodite down from her high horse, you will have to read for yourself.

Own Opinion
The first thing I'm gonna say is that my opinion on this series is quite negative. If you liked it then don't read on, because I didn't. I have to admit that the plot is pretty good and I also enjoyed the fact that it's none of those "oh my gosh we're all so innocent, we never made a move and never mention the word sex! Oh my god now I said it myself!"-books.
But theres guys. I know I didn't mention any guys above (except for Damien, but Damien doesn't count because he's gay), but theres guys. Lots of guys. And I don't like the way Zoey goes around town with guys. I'm on book five right now (I've only read this far because I bought the first 5 books at once and if I bought them I'm gonna read them) and I think she's on guy number 4 right now or something, always coming back to the first one, than saying "But I love the second one I want to get back together with him!" And I think it's pathetic and - don't read the next few words if you're younger than 13 - a slut.
I know it's harsh for me to give a series a negative review because of the romance part, but I had those thoughts going on since book two or three and I thought "Oh it can't be that bad, I'll give it another shot" and it actually IS that bad - a friend of mine has read the first two books independently from me and she gave up in the middle of the second book with the same reasons that I have.
To be quite honest, now I'm going to finish the series - it's only three more books -, but I'm not gonna buy the other ones (it's not worth the money any more to me) but instead borrow them from the library. Maybe I'll end up liking the series so much to be able to look over the boys-part of the series. If that is the case, I will write another blog post reviewing it positively.

The Reformed Vampire Support Group

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Title: The Reformed Vampire Support Group
Author: Catherine Jinks
Publisher: Harcourt Children's Books
ISB N: 0152066098 / 978-0152066093
Price: 17.00 $
Source: Library
Pages: 368

Everybody has his own fantasies about vampires, but all of them have one thing in common: vampires ar strong and dangerous. But that's wrong. They are poor fragile creatures that are either spending their nights in front of the TV or with their heads over the toilet because the vampires in Sydney, Australia, are abstinent: they feed on guinea pigs, not human blood.  They even formed a support group that meets every Tuesday night, but one night Casimir (the vampire that directly or indirectly infected the rest of Australia's vampires) is found as a pile of ashes in his appartment. This means danger for everybody because the vampirehunter has Casimir's adress book, so he could stake every member of the support group during the day (that's when they're clinically dead and just lay around in the dark).
Because of the fact that the killer did not only use the stake, but also a silver bullet on its victim, the support group does some research and Father Ramón, the priest that supervises the vampire group, Dave and Nina drive to Walgeroo corner because that's where the most silver bullits of this kind have been orderd in whole Australia.They find out that they are dealing with illegal werewolf fights that are being organized by the McKinnons. The priest tries to talk to father and son about the mysterious bullets, but then they are all put in underground cells (that were once used as water tanks).
Will Nina, Dave and Father Ramón be able to free themselves? Will they be able to stop the werewolf fights? Will the support group be able to find the vampire hunter? Read yourself to find out ;D.



Own Opinion
Obviosly I liked the book! it was written in a great style (even though I don't really like first person-narrators), the storyline and the realization were fantastic. But actually something new and unexpected happened again and again: the book isn't constructed like a narration rat but more like a narration camel - with lots and lots and LOTS of  bumps! They actually said on the book that there were sudden plot changes to the last page but I didn't expect it to be this extreme. I actually got bored at the and because there was always something sudden  and you cold barely chill out from the last one.
But I think it's remarkable that the author Catherine Jinks can describe action scenes with so much power which is actually very hard to do in books, I could also relate very well to the main character Nina.
Put into a nutshell, I really liked the book which is kind of surprising because I only took the book at the library becaus I liked the cover :) Everyone who likes action should take a good look at this book but if you're on the look for a good vampire romance you're on the wrong page.

by Cecile

NaNoWriMo

Hey guys!
So todays post won't be a book review (btw I'm sorry I didn't post for so long, I have a few good ones coming up, I promise!) but I'm gonna be talking about something that has to do with books. The NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month (the picture above is the website's header) is from November 1st till November 30th and they want YOU! What do they want you for? To write a novel.
A book of 50 000 words is the goal of everybody who is participating.

Personally, I got no idea why they had to choose November - I guess because it's sad, foggy and rainy and you spend your whole time at home anyways - and I'm not really okay with this particular month being the NaNoWriMo because I have to finish my seminare paper untl Nov. 8th and then I have lots of exams coming up.

I found someone in a forum talking about NaNoWriMo (dude that's hard to write with all the capital letters in the middle) and I remembered I had heard about it last year through a tweet by Cassandra Clare but I didn't really care so I didn't check what it was. I did this year and now I'm all excited (which is probably bad news for me considering the stuff in November I wrote down in the last paragraph).

Basically, you sign up on the website and then starting November 1st, midnight in your time zone, you're allowed to start writing your story - with any program you want - and you just update your word count every day. At the end of the month you upload your novel to the website and an automatic programm counts the words to tell wether you cheated or not.

Alright that were kind of the basics, if you need any more info I suggest reading everything on the page. I think I'm goig to participate and I want you to participate, too, so that we can all motivate each other, maybe I'll write a post in the middle of November to tell y'all how things are going with it.

Have fun :)

P.S.: I'm really sorry I abandoned Kick Their Butt While Reading, as already said I have a few good posts coming up because during my vacation in Hungary I read 6 books :)