Marked (House of Night, Book 1) by PC Cast, Kristin Cast Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Marked (House of Night, Book 1)
Book Review: Consider me MARKED...
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this novel in one sitting. I'm completely enamored with the world created by P.C. and Kristin Cast and I adore powerful, but confused Zoey. As a bonus, I live in Tulsa and it was great fun to see familiar settings rewritten (Cascia Hall as the House of Night? Woot!). I can't wait for BETRAYED. Write faster, ladies! I'm hooked!Book Review: Not that great...
Summary: 2 Stars
I wrote a review, and yet Amazon somehow ate it, so let's try again.
The novel is okay - it's well written enough. The main character has some interesting ways of describing things. But it's not as good as it could be. Specifically:
- The main character is a Mary Sue. From the beginning, she's special, special, special - she's part Cherokee, she's beautiful, everybody loves her, she's got an awesome facial tattoo that fills itself in by magic, and she doesn't have a single negative trait that would spoil the impression that she's anything but perfect. She's also got a magic cat.
- Her friends are essentially the cast of the first season Real World. There's the Black Girl, the Gay Guy, and even the Okie Girl. They have no traits, but chirp at each other amusingly in order to seem like the world's most wonderful friends.
- There's some religious bigotry in that all of the pagans are absolutely perfect, handsome, Byron-spouting Goths - more of that wish fulfillment - and all of the people who belong to the Old Religion are a bunch of hypocritical, patriarchal jerks. This is the kind of simpleminded thinking that most writers outgrow around the age of sixteen or so; not so much here.
- The antagonists are simply evil without having any other personality traits. There's some vague mutterings about how the evil girl is "set up" towards the end, but nothing that makes her more a cartoon.
You could find better pagan fiction, better vampire fiction, better high school fiction - the writing is technically good, but I would say that the series needs to get seriously deep or it'll remain a layer of wish-fulfillment frosting over an empty cake.
Book Review: Welcome To The House of Night
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a P.C. Cast fan so when I found out about this book I got excited, most of Cast's books have been really great reads so I was interested to find out how she would tackle blending Vampires with her wonderful trademark of Goddess-Touched Women. I was pleased to find that the duo of Cast and Cast have created quite a fleshed out world in Marked, I didn't have to sprain my suspension of belief muscle to get where the book was trying to take me. Though I must say I could not escape visions of a Vamperic Hogworts(Maybe its just me.) Zoey is Funny, honest, and angsty even though somtimes she seemed a tad on the preachy side, I liked that she had a strong idea of what was right for herself, and the friends she makes in her new life remind me strongly of people in my own.
Admittedly Marked is just busting at the seams with cliches and a formulated plot but in this case thats not such a terrible thing, and besides there are a few new/newer twists, that I won't give away. all an all Marked is a solid book, and a promising start to a series that looks like it's going to be lengthy series. I try not to drop a series once i've started it so I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that that the following installments are as good as the first one.
Book Review: Join the House of Night
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow!
I didn't start off loving this book. In fact I was a little lost on what was going on. Soon though I was caught up and caught in this interesting book with a totally new spin on the vampire book.
Marked in the first pages of the book, Zoey has to leave her home and start out all over again in the House of Night. This is the Vampyre School where fledglings learn what it is to be Vampyre and to hopefully go on to become adults. If not, they die. Dealing with all the changes and her new powers Zoey has to choose to live in the past or become who she was ment to be.
This is a great read!
Book Review: This is a terrific opening book in a young adult fantasy series
Summary: 5 Stars
At a high school in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma the Tracker Vampyre MARKED sixteen years old Zoey Montgomery as a fledgling vampyre accepted at the House of Night, a prep school that trains the newcomers into becoming productive adults. The good is she no longer is failing geometry at SIHS; the bad is that some of the chosen fail to survive the Change. Leaving behind her close buddies, her boyfriend Heath and his beer binging, attending OSU, her step-loser dad, and using her grandfather's name Zoey Redbird begins her new life.
As she adjusts to Vampyre School and makes new friends, the faculty knows Zoey is special. Nyx the Vampyre Goddess has given her and at least one other fledgling special powers.. However, with life and death still to come, Zoey with loyal new friends finds herself in direct opposition against the elitist Dark Daughters, whose leader abuses Nyx's special endowment.
This is a terrific opening young adult fantasy that targets the high school crowd. The cast (pun intended) make the tale work as the audience will believe in vampyre high school because of the fully developed faculty and students. However, the entertaining coming of age story line belongs to the heroine, who just wants to fit in and not have to battle dangerous peers while fearing the Change as she keeps the fine plot focused.
Harriet Klausner