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juushikaTitle: The Last Vampire (Thirst Book 1)
Author: Christopher Pike
Published: New York: Simon Pulse, 2009 (1994)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 197
Total Page Count: 91,192
Text Number: 261
Read Because: review requested by an acquaintance, borrowed from said acquaintance
Review: Alisa is a five thousand year old vampire living a life of comfort until she learns that someone is tracking her—someone who seems to who who and what she is. The Thirst series is intended to be literary junk food: each installment is a quick 200 pages chock full of cliffhangers, simple writing, and gratuitous characterization and plot—a cheap guilty pleasure to be consumed in bulk. This sort of junk reading isn't to my taste, but I don't begrudge that others may enjoy it—except that despite such intentions, The Last Vampire is no guilty pleasure: it's just plain bad. A combination of stunted first person narrative (intended to sound ancient, it just sounds awkward and distant) and telling when Pike should be showing makes for a narrative which is so bland and passive that not even murders and cliffhangers can add intrigue to the plot. Alisa's idealized characterization crosses the boundary of irritating, and the reader soon grows tired of hearing how beautiful, talented, and powerful she is. Her unusual vampiric origins could be interesting, but clunky delivery makes the backstory as bland as the main plot; underdeveloped secondary characters with arbitrary and unsubstantial connections to Alisa strip away all other potential motivation and passion. The Last Vampire has no redeeming qualities—its brevity would be one if the book didn't end in another silly cliffhanger. Lifeless, heartless, and joyless, The Last Vampire is satisfying neither as a good book or as a fun easy read. It's a waste of time, and I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Christopher Pike
Published: New York: Simon Pulse, 2009 (1994)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 197
Total Page Count: 91,192
Text Number: 261
Read Because: review requested by an acquaintance, borrowed from said acquaintance
Review: Alisa is a five thousand year old vampire living a life of comfort until she learns that someone is tracking her—someone who seems to who who and what she is. The Thirst series is intended to be literary junk food: each installment is a quick 200 pages chock full of cliffhangers, simple writing, and gratuitous characterization and plot—a cheap guilty pleasure to be consumed in bulk. This sort of junk reading isn't to my taste, but I don't begrudge that others may enjoy it—except that despite such intentions, The Last Vampire is no guilty pleasure: it's just plain bad. A combination of stunted first person narrative (intended to sound ancient, it just sounds awkward and distant) and telling when Pike should be showing makes for a narrative which is so bland and passive that not even murders and cliffhangers can add intrigue to the plot. Alisa's idealized characterization crosses the boundary of irritating, and the reader soon grows tired of hearing how beautiful, talented, and powerful she is. Her unusual vampiric origins could be interesting, but clunky delivery makes the backstory as bland as the main plot; underdeveloped secondary characters with arbitrary and unsubstantial connections to Alisa strip away all other potential motivation and passion. The Last Vampire has no redeeming qualities—its brevity would be one if the book didn't end in another silly cliffhanger. Lifeless, heartless, and joyless, The Last Vampire is satisfying neither as a good book or as a fun easy read. It's a waste of time, and I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
