Zoey’s soul has been shattered but, sadly, because my
suffering has not ended that means everyone is running around trying to save
her.
Meanwhile Stevie Rae is determined to make even worse relationship decisions than Zoey. That sounds like a near impossible task, but she is up to the challenge.
This book is… so very typical of the House of Night series.
We have a plot line that completely rests on Zoey even
though it really should be about someone else – Heath. Heath is the one who
died – but no, it’s all about Zoey and her shattered soul. Y’know, I’d be a
teeny tiny bit of sympathetic towards her if every last death in this series
wasn’t all about her. Heath just follows Stark and Stevie Rae as yet another
death that was all about precious precious Zoey.
So with Zoey properly centred as all important, nearly everyone else (except Stevie Rae, which we’ll come to) runs around trying to help her. This involves, inevitably, cryptic clues, poetry and everyone spending far far far far far too long trying to interpret everything because Nyx is incapable of being clear and the rest of the cast don’t have two brain cells between them.
Of course all of this happens with Neferet and Kalona
planning terrbad naughty things and with Neferet manipulating the Council to try
and make them believe she’s still on team good guy. And Nyx, while happy to
send cryptic poetry, happy to send prophecies, happy to have little conversations
with Aphrodite and Zoey and is even willing to slap Kalona upside the head in
the Otherworld. But she STILL cannot bring herself to send her precious High
Council a memo, or informative bowel problems or anything. Seriously, you’d
think they’d be due a text or something. A tweet. Smoke signals, carrier
pigeons (or raven monsters) something, anything. Nyx is trolling, pure and
simple.
But while we’re discussing Kalona let’s touch on the
intolerable retcon and redemption we can see hoving into view with inevitable
awfulness: Kalona is going to be redeemed. I know this is coming because we
spent time in this book AGAIN saying how sad and tortured poor Kalona is with
an added side dish of how terribad evil Neferet is. Yes, she is definitely
promoted to biggest of big bads and directly connected to the Darkness more
than Kalona (more than that later) and is even imprisoning and forcing the poor
tortured evil Kalona. I’ve said before, this series is much much more invested
in having a female villain. The last two books have tried very hard to downplay
Kalona’s villainy while bigging up Neferet’s awfulness.
Now some sensible people would say that Kalona, a rapist
and multiple murderer can’t possibly be redeemed. To which I say, oh sensible
person why are you even reading this book?!
I don’t even know if it’s worth even poking this damn
plot. I mean Zoey goes to the Otherland with her shattered soul and puts it
together. I’d like to say that this was an interesting story in which Zoey confronted
all the different aspects of her personality and ritually murdered each
terrible one but that would be a lie – we have three bits which wave and lo,
done. There’s no conflict or development. Zoey goes form “waaah I can’t put my
soul together” to “ok putting my soul together now” by just… trying harder.
Most of the plot is consumed by the dullness of Stevie
Rae’s love life and the attempt to portray some desperate conflict with the
House of Night which basically involves Stevie Rae occasionally meeting people,
losing all patience with them within seconds and without them really saying
anything and then storming out. It’s like the authors really want to portray
her as getting sick of the establishment and storming out – but doesn’t have
the patience to actually write the storyline because, really, it’s all about
the love life
Stevie Rae has looked at the hot trainwreck mess of Zoey’s
relationship and said that she can totally trump it (but probably with more
folksy aphorisms because the way she speaks is so terrible I think the whole
state of Oklahoma should declare war on the Casts. Or, at least, the book
should come with a Gibberish Hillbilly to English dictionary). Yes, her imprint
with Rephaim the evil bird monster has turned into a full blown romance. Of
course, this being a House of Night
book we can’t possibly have just one love interest for our pseudo-protagonist –
so she’s already being followed around by the electric Red Fledgling Dallas (so
called because he has absolutely no personality at all but instead has a shiny
special magic power which kind of makes up for not having a personality right?).
Like her precious Zoey she decides the best way to deal
with a love triangle is to sneak around behind the back of your boyfriend while
you establish a relationship elsewhere. Of course, this would make her an utterly
terrible person so, in proper House of
Night fashion he transforms into an utter monster so Stevie Rae manages to
keep on being the good guy. It’s very very helpful that the love interests in
this book are always willing to start mining to the depths so the protagonists
can cling to their moral high ground.
This may also explain why they’re attracted to the most
evil possible guys around. Zoey got her redeemed rapist (aaargh, why do I even
have to type that phrase?) who has pretty much set himself up as her one and
only - so Stevie Rae decides she’s going to fall in love with and bond Rephaim,
the inhuman, murdering Raven Monster
I just can’t wait until the next book when, if we’re
following Zoey’s patter, Stevie Rae declares everyone judgmental meanings for
not accepting her super evil love interest as a good guy.
There’s another issue with this imprint – Stevie Rae is
sexually and romantically attracted to Rephaim because woo-woo imprint (also,
can we say again how Nyx magically connects guys to the women so they don’t
actually have to pursue their own love interests which means it’s totally ok
they’re all naughty bad evil?). Stevie Rae previously imprinted Aphrodite and,
as Cyna pointed out, the whole cast practically jumped up and down yelling “no homo no homo no homo no homo no homo!”
at the very idea that Aphrodite and Stevie Rae may have be attracted because of
the woo-woo. This is repeated this book with Stevie Rae making it super-duper
clear that she’s not gay and totally not attracted to Aphrodite ever not for
one moment. Ok, not gay let’s swallow how very very hard they try to convince
us of that – but then consider that she IS developing those sexy feelings for
the Raven Monster. (Cyna has also provided a picture of said Raven Monster. It
haunts my dreams so you must all click the link and have it haunt yours).
Stevie Rae has a thing for feathers it seems.
And I suppose I need to talk about the new edition to the
cannon – the Light and the Darkness, good and evil (which nicely shits all over
the previous insistence that making dark bad and light good is narrow and
simplistic – hence the whole Nyx being goddess of night but not evil) which
involves people actually not knowing what a bull is (no, really, she feels the
need to explain that a bull is a male cow because the authors really have this
little respect for the intelligence of their target audience). There’s really
not much more to say there – there’s a big evil darkness and a big good light.
It’s a speculative fiction staple, naughty darkness, nice lightness. There’s
nothing especially original about this except the clumsy way it’s retconned in:
the whole idea that this whole religion of good and evil fell out of fashion is
because all this conflict is all “masculine” while the vampire high council is
a Matriarchy. This Matriarchy comes with a super-duper rigid set of gender
roles apparently.
Which, of course, makes it almost amusing when Stevie Rae
tries to call out Dallas for being upset that he can’t protect her. I mean, it’s
supposed to be a “rawr I am woman I don’t need a man to protect me” moment, but
since book one this series has had this Matriarchy rigidly declare that men get
physical gifts and protect the women. They’re protectors, warriors, guardians -
over and over again this is repeated and then you turn round and try to call it
out?
But his does segue into, technically, an improvement: the
terrible awful treatment of POC and gay characters is, technically, better. I
don’t say “improved” because that’s a lie. Even more than the last book, the “nerd
herd” has become less and less involved, more and more absent. It does mean
when they’re referred to it’s still terrible – but usually they’re not referred
to at all. They’re a footnote and, thankfully, there’s a limit to how much of a
hot mess a footnote could be. Kramisha remains the most prominent POC – who plays
poet, prophet and sounding board for Stevie Rae. I mean she’s more prominent
than most, but that’s because she’s lackie-in-chief
I find myself disappointed by this book. It’s terrible,
but it’s very predictably terrible – mangled cannon, terrible writing, awful
portrayals, a plot line that makes no sense, a ridiculous Zoey focus, a train
wreck of a “romance” and a general urge to strangle everyone. I don’t hope for
the series to get better, but I would rather like it to be terrible in original
ways.
