Elise is the first
vampire born, the first vampire who has never been a human - and the first
vampire with a dark secret presence in her mind
She has left home to
live in Paris for several years to try and get some space to find herself. But
with the talks to try and establish a lasting peace in Europe, she finds
herself back in Chicago
And facing the beast inside her - and a plot to end the peace talks and put the whole city at risk
I… can’t say I’m a
huge fan of Elisa? I mean I don’t feel any especially personality with her. And
I’m trying hard not to compare her to Merit - but it’s inevitable that since
this series is literally the heir to the previous Chicagoland series; the
protagonists are going to be compared. And Merit with her love of books and
junk food and baseball, her snark and close relationships, her determination to
face down Ethan and her father - Merit had personality, Merit was a character
and she was surrounded by other characters.
Elise… isn’t? I mean
she likes coffee… that’s kind of like the only thing I know about her. Her
personality,wishes, desires, hopes, everything is subsumed into both her
struggle with the Beast and her
I-hate-him-but-we’re-definite-love-interests-Connor.
What’s most
frustrating is how much meat there’s there! She’s the first born vampire. She
grew up never seeing the sun and literally not knowing what she was and
surrounded by supernaturals. She moved away to France and spent years there
trying to find herself. How can this not inform her character? How can someone
so unique with such different life experiences BE SO BLAND?! Why doesn’t her
years in France inform any of her character except her hanging around with
French vampires who are shuffled out of the way before we have to focus on them
too much. Why isn’t her being the
And there’s the
“beast” which is again, blandified. If your character is literally hosting a
powerful magical entity that feasts on rage and turns her eyes red I expect it
to be… more? I mean now and then she struggles to control it - as in we have a
paragraph of her saying no to the Beast, and we move on. And when she loses
control? She beats up someone who kind of deserves it? She fights hard in a
situation where she’s already fighting? The unwillingness to make Elise do
anything truly bad or awful with the Beast (she beat up a man who stole from
and was going to sexually assault her best friend? Merit would do that twice,
no need for the Beast) makes it all feel limp and, yes, bland
To add to the
blandness we have the characters around her. Merit worked because she was
surrounded by fun an awesome characters as well -he conflicts and romance with
Ethan was interesting. She had Mallory her best friend which waxed and waned,
there was Catcher and Jeff and her grandfather and the fraught relationship
with her parents and even her frustrating relationship with Morgan. There were
PEOPLE in her life and they were all informed enough and interesting enough to
add to the story, to her story.
But Elise? The French
vampires she’s lived with seem to be just there. Her friend Lulu is aiming to
be a character but instead just hits a collection of arty quirks more than a
personality (I mean, she has potential for a storyline being a potential witch
who eschews magic but there’s not a lot of conflict or development there. She
just is). Connor is the designated sexy love interest. That’s pretty much it -
I mean he’s vying to control the Pack some day which means he would be
interesting if we followed that plot line beyond “he is leaving and I am sad”
from Elise. And then there’s a bunch of names. There’s this guy who is locked
up and this is really upsetting to everyone. Apparently. There’s various
ombudsmen people following Elise around - I don’t know any of these people, I
don’t know why I should care. There’s no attempt to make me invested or even
remember their names. They’re just bland. Bland bland bland bland.
It doesn’t help that
the plot doesn’t step outside that blandness, following some very cliched
paths. She decides to get involved in the investigation because for convoluted
reasons she’s the only one who can and for equally convoluted reasons the
person who should be doing it is conveniently inept. But her investigation
relies on the dubiously convenient (finding a piece of jewellery everyone else
missed and everyone deciding it was damning… when it wasn’t) to making bad and
extremely risky decisions with no apparent foundation (let’s go visit the
fairies and accuse them without evidence! Or Reason!) which Somehow Work Out
AND don’t get them killed (isn’t it lucky the fairies are fool enough to
violently attack and validate the outrageous intrusion while not being SO
dangerous as to actually kill the protagonist making these ridiculous choices).
Plot convenience is the only thing that keeps this moving. And even that’s
somewhat shaky… because the big bad decides to become really public and obvious
with their plotting. I’m actually not sure if Elise does anything to save the
day, discover the big bad or… anything? I mean she gets kidnapped one time but
even then the plan is thwarted due to rescue and circumstances outside her
control.
And diversitywise we
have… we have…. Hmmm… now in the past I highlighted every instance in a book
that referenced a minority so I could say “extra #5477 was Black”. I’m not
doing it any more - because if your “inclusion” is such that i can’t remember
it after I finish the book then that speaks volumes. So I’m going to say there
were no stand out minority characters in this book at all except a reference to
one of the vampire houses which, to be honest, I know to be south Asian because
of the original series.
In all I feel that
this was not the best reboot of the series. We needed more time to explore
these characters for these characters to establish themselves and be real
rather than throwing in epic faerie drama and lots of characters we know
nothing about. Start out with some personal drama and personal stories,
something that lets us get close to Elise and her friends rather than focusing
more on the city and wider context which just makes me feel sad that Merit
isn’t taking over
