How did I end up here, you may ask?
I wanted to read The Midnight Club. I'm a fan of Mike Flanagan's, I love retro and vintage looking covers, I love second-hand books. But what I've found was The Last Vampire bind up and nothing else, so I got it. I'm guessing my book is pretty old, since the series were rebranded into Thirst and my cover is orange.
Reading this after slowly going through Vampire Chronicles is wacky. The main character's POV is Lestat x200, but she's also a hot…teen? Between the two books, Sita (the main character's name) claims she's either stuck in eighteen or twenty, which isn't a big difference. But even in the most crucial of moments she never fails to mention how acute her hearing is and how powerful or beautiful she is. Sure, there's a couple of dudes to rival her strength, but if she's not mentioning her abilities, there's always Krishna.
I might be dumb. I am not a history buff. But Aryans in India? Like, white people coming from India? The main character Sita is 5000 years old, born in India and is a white, blue-eyed, long-haied blond. She also had a husband and a daughter before she was turned into the vampire. Which also makes her to be one of the first 10 vampires ever created.
The whole love bit was hilarious. She just finds herself a teen, steals him from his girlfriend, he gets mortally wounded and then doesn't take to vampirism and sacrfices himself. And by the end of the second book, she makes another, after he told her no, while passing out. Important to mention, there's another highschooler, who is a horror writer and gets cured from AIDS, but he's also not gay, cause he was staring at Sita. He also has prophetic dreams. Smells like a self-insert, yet not the worst one.
What also brought me to Anne Rice's vampires, was the creation. In Queen of The Damned, there's a spirit that takes over a body and that condition spreads to other people. Feel free to correct me, but I'm shortening things. In the Last Vampire, a priest calls out to a yakshini, a demon that manifested through a dead pregnant woman (Sita's best friend) and the first vampire is named Yaksha, who is the child in that womb. Vampires also cry blood, vampires are made by the exchange of blood, vampires can hypnotise. Which are simple traits, but the The Last Vampire was published in 1995, so by the time at least the first four Vampire Chronicles books were out. I do not mean to say that there's plagirism, but It was so funny to see the influence.
Reading the first two books (around 200 pages each) was fun. Some stuff is certainly r/menwritingwomen worthy, like men objectifying Sita, which turns into 'go get 'em girl' scene, often gory, which was quite fun. It's fun. Reading about different vampires is fun. My eye is twitching though.
I gave it a three. I won't be buying the Thirst covers, because they are abhorrent, so I don't think I'll be reading further. No hater to the author. I apologize for any typos, I am indeed not a native English speaker.
by skylerren
11 Comments
I’ve only read Pike’s murder suspense books. I can’t even imagine how over dramatic his vampire series might be
I read the crap out of Pike in the late 80s early 90s. Definitely felt like a prototypical author of thrillers for teen girls
I don’t care what you say. Christopher Pike was a big part of my life as a teenager in the 90’s and you could never ruin it for me!
I haven’t read that series in a few years but if I recall correctly near the end of the series she will create Dracula by using her blood to cure his leprosy. I remember loving it when I was a teenager but it was out there.
Wait, it portrays the Aryans of India as blue-eyed blondes? That’s actually hilarious.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_peoples
Is it crazier than John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In?
I loooooooved this series as a kid. Loved.
I love Christopher Pike so much, a lot of it can seem problematic now but some of the stories have stuck with me my whole life. I really loved his novel The Season of Passage.
I love Christopher Pike, dude wrote some wild stuff.
Spooksville is probably my favorite series from childhood.
Regarding Aryans in India, this isn’t my area of knowledge or study in history, but my understanding is that the Aryans were actually a dark-skinned, dark haired dark eyed nomadic people from an area on the North West side of India. The typical blond haired blue eyed people are probably a confusion between Nords or Nordics, from Scandinavia and the Allemani, one of the main Germanic groups (which is why Germany is known as Allemania or Allemange (Allemande?) In other languages. Sorry, don’t remember the spelling. It’s been a long time since I formally studied French and Spanish. Anyway, my understanding was that the Allemani had dark hair too.
Christopher Pike was my favorite author as a kid. I started reading his books in 1994 with The Midnight Club. I dropped so many of those paperbacks in the bathtub.
I have been buying used copies whenever I find them. I still love them for the nostalgia.