Day 51 - Marked

Marked

P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Synopsis: [from back cover]

Enter the dark, magical world of the house of night, a world very much like our own, except here vampyres have always existed. Sixteen-year-old Zoey Redbird has just been Marked as a fledgling vampyre and joins the House of Night, a school where she will train to become and adult vampyre. That is, if she makes it through the Change - and not all of those who are Marked do. It sucks to begin a new life, especially away from her friends, and on top of that, Zoey is no average fledgling. She has been chosen as special by the vampyre Goddess Nyx. Zoey discovers she has amazing powers, but along with her powers come blood lust and an unfortunate ability to Imprint her human ex-boyfriend. To add to her stress, she is not the only fledgling at the House of Night with special powers: When she discovers that the leader of the Dark Daughters, the school's most elite group, is misusing her Goddess-given gifts, Zoey must look deep within herself for the courage to embrace her destiny - with a little help from her new vampyre friends.

Review:

I have to say I enjoyed the pace and writing style of this book. It was a nice change from other books I've been reading in it's simplified format. It definitely seemed that both Cast ladies weren't really all that worked up about writing a perfect-sounding book. It was simple in its delivery and it made it easy for me to get through so quickly.

I found myself easily liking and relating to Zoey. Even though I'm not a sixteen-year old Marked vampyre fledgling, she just seemed like a very real character to me; someone I would love to have around everyday. I thought she did very well for herself after being thrown into a whole new life where she knew no one. But that doesn't last for long. She quickly comes across new people/vampyres that make the book interesting. A myriad of characters that I quickly came to love, to hate, and to giggle about with Zoey and her repetitive mental sidecracks (which I adored). Zoey tends to explain herself every other page and it's too cute.

I absolutely love the idea of the tattoo markings and the emblems of the students and professors at the House of Night. Without going into too many details, I just really loved how creative the authors got when they came up with this world. **Sidenote: If you go to the here, you can take a look at all the fun goodies at the House of Night. If you haven't heard of these books, it's a nice place to start to see if you'd enjoy them. And if you have read them or thought about reading them, it's fun to see some of the ideas in the book illustrated.

I have yet to read anything by P.C. Cast and I'm not sure if Kristin has written any novels herself, so I don't know who to credit for the constant touches of modern pop culture into the book. It may be both of them. Either way, it was cute and a nice touch to this vampyre world. I also liked the fact that the characters in this book weren't too "young" for me. I don't normally like to read YA. In fact, I'm trying to get more into it. However, they sounded and acted like people I would like to be around. With their sometimes colorful language and hilarious cracks, it made me comfortable with the fact that I liked this book. The characters were defined well and made me want to keep getting to know them.

I'm not going to summarize the book, even though I want to (= I feel as if I started doing that I would just write out everything that happens and it would be pointless to read the story. But I will say that this was a fun and exciting start for a promising series.