Untamed: House of Night, #4 -- P.C. & Kristin Cast
Spoilers about the first three books below.
At the end of Chosen, fledgling vampyre Zoey Redbird had no boyfriend (down from three -- one dead, one definitely hating her and the third maybe possibly hating her), no friends (unless you count her ex-enemy Aphrodite and her undead ex-roommate Stevie Rae), and the school's High Priestess now knows that Zoey knows that she is a big fake and totally evil rather than loving and nurturing and wise. Oh, and that same evil High Priestess has declared a secret guerrilla war on the humans. And there are an awful lot of ravens around...
Spoilers about Untamed below.
Improvements from last time:
There is a group of hip, cat-loving, judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged-type Benedictine nuns to represent nice Christians and counter-balance the fact that every single other Christian that has appeared in this series has been either a bigoted, possibly murderous freak, or completely subservient to said bigoted, possibly murderous freak.
Problems:
This book could have easily been a good hundred pages shorter if the authors had not felt the need to rehash the events of the previous three books over and over and over again. And again some more. Not just events, but simple details about the vampyre lifestyle: If a reader hasn't figured out by page 134 that day and night are switched for the vampyres, it's sink or swim time.
Still with the typos.
Zoey's assumption that everyone she meets is going to take issue with vampyres or her gay friends is really getting old. Zoey: The chip on your shoulder. Lose it.
Every time Zoey does or says something remotely leader-like, she says something along the lines of "Their looks of growing confidence made me think that I might, someday, become a halfway decent High Priestess".
Two of the "big words" that Damien used that the Twins complained about: 'flummoxed' and 'nefarious'. Okay, these kids are supposedly studying some pretty hardcore literature, and their lack of knowledge makes me question the quality of their House of Night education.
All of Zoey's friends continue to be walking quirks: Damien and his vocabulary and the Twins with their Twin-ness. Poor Jack is still just around to gush at everyone, but especially at Damien: "You're so smart about movies! You know all of them."
I am getting very tired of the word "exotic" used to describe every single person who isn't white. As well as the word 'u-we-tsi-a-ge-ya' followed up by the phrase "the Cherokee work for 'daughter'". That's been explained at least twice in every single book.
This book is set LITERALLY a couple of days after all the shit went down with her last three boyfriends. You'd think that maybe she wouldn't be interested in anyone at the moment. HA. The second she sees the new guy, Stark, she goes jelloid. (And, as does every straight guy in her orbit, so does he, even though he's all distant and tortured and Bad Boy-ish with everyone else.) And then he dies, like, three seconds later, and the death scene is full of more terrible cliched cheese than Trinity's death in the last Matrix movie and Dizzy's death in Starship Troopers combined:
"I should have kissed more than your hand . . . thought I'd have more time," he whispered between liquid, panting breaths. ". . . too late now."
And that's not all. It's full of lines like this: "I felt Stark's kiss on my lips all the way back to the dorm as the surreal croaking of ravens filled the night."
Remember that terrible line about Pamela Anderson in the first book? Well, the simile gets used again in this one: "Aphrodite gave Neferet a big reassuring smile that was as fake as Pamela Anderson's boobs."
Due to the rehashing and to a serious lack of action up until the last ten pages, Untamed was pretty much a big lead-up to the next book in the series and thus, flat-out boring. At least the other ones, while also rife with problems, were entertaining.
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Previously: