"Darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good."I found the idea interesting and worth pondering (I still don't know what I make of it), and posted it on my page. From there my lovely bibliophile friends said I should read this series (granted I did not know about it until then).
So my friend loaned me the book and I just finished reading it. It was an okay read. Some parts were confusing, sometimes contradictory. The writing wasn't anything to rave over. It's not terrible to where I would be against reading the other books in the series, it just...I think it would rate a point higher than Twilight.
First off, at the beginning I was thoroughly confused (It actually took me the entire first chapter to realize vampyres = vampires. major brain fail there.). 'Vampyres' are not some mythological, unknown, thought to not be real idea, but actual 'creatures'. There is a school/coven and many of the famous actors, actresses, singers, writers, and so on are vampyres. There are certain types of vampyres called Trackers, and they track down humans to turn into vampyres. Those humans are then 'marked' (hence the title of the book, since this covers what happens immediately after Zoey, the protagonist, is marked) and go to the House of Night, a boarding school/coven for vampyres. The Cast ladies did not go right out and say that this is the case, it took some figuring out from the information given.
There were also some parts that seemed to contradict earlier statements/actualities in the story. But in order to double check on those I would need my own copy and a pencil to mark them out with, so don't hold me to this statement.
There was also much cursing (quite a few f-bombs were dropped), scenes that were hinting at sex/sexual activities, and to put bluntly, and explicit scene of attempted oral sex (ewwwwwww).
Soooo....yeah.....Maybe I should retracted my earlier statements about being willing to read the other books. Not only did many of these 'romance' scenes make me a little uncomfortable, I wish I could read a teen book like this (which has a fantastic plot concept, a bit poorly executed) were the romance wasn't physically based, or where the two involved had a 'spiritual' attraction after two interactions. Give me some relationships like those from Harry Potter, or The Rangers Apprentice, and that would be fantastic.
On a slightly lighter note, what's with all the blondes in the book? It's like the population in House of Night is 95% blonde, 5% other. Wow. That and there were some clichés/Mary sue descriptions. And I couldn't connect with any of the characters from the story, and I think that says a lot. If you can't connect with a character, then what kind of story is it?
One of the goals for this blog is to provide information for parents and readers alike to find 'clean' reads suitable for their children or themselves. In all my reviews I will mention general themes from the book, language, sexual/romantic interaction, and violence.
Themes:
Vampyres (Vampires), Greek mythology, coming of age, survival, monsters, death, magic
Language:
Language throughout, F-bomb dropped by the second chapter, around ten (maybe more) f-bombs total, along with other cursing.
Sexual/Romantic Interaction
Heavy on sexual talk/images. Blood is used as a sexual play toy, oral sex, touching inappropriate areas.
Violence
Heavy on blood. One scene were a boy dies coughing up blood is descriptive. Knives, rituals, murderous ghosts.
I would give Marked a rating of heavy PG-13
On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = horrible, 2 = OK, 3 = I liked it, 4 = I really liked it, 5 = I loved it), I would give Marked a 2
Good idea on this, Sara. :)
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