Just a little preamble: this book is meant to be read by teenagers and I am reviewing it as an adult literature. So if you are looking at a young adult book to read or suggest to someone in the family, this review may not help you!
I found that the start of the story was confusing, as if you opened a book with the first twenty or so pages ripped off. Tate’s sister has ‘died’ in a scandal and so Tate is ostracized in school. Cool kids like Alice do not hobnob with her. Mackie loves Alice and when she pays attention, even though the attention is simply to get him to donate blood, he melts. He has a very strong allergic reaction to blood. Friends taunt him – he finds words written in blood on his locker showing “Freak!”.
As you read on, you slowly learn that Mackie’s skin burns when he reaches the consecrated parts of the Church. You also realize that many of the kids in town have been replaced by something else and our hero is one of the replacements. He cannot stand blood or steel or iron or a few other things.
And he has this confusing way of living like an adolescent often does. He wants to apologize to Tate but runs away every time and even actively hurts and antagonizes her. All the while he runs after Emily, the popular and gorgeous girl in the class. But does he? Not really. Go figure.
The book then gets weirder. His mother admits to being taken to a dark place but refuses to answer his question on how she is back in USA. He goes to an underground meeting of vampires where he learns that their leader, a shark toothed young girl, explains that they need to keep humans happy and unaware of their existence to keep themselves alive and enlists Mackie’s help to do so, by being the lead person in the band they have formed. All juvenile childish stuff with his trouble with multiple girls and his refusal to do anything sensible. He refuses to go to parties, then goes, then leaves halfway, then refuses to tell why; constantly feels sorry for himself and is rude to everyone. And he has loads of friends who know that he is really a good guy underneath all that rudeness. Hmmmm…
Even when you understand the premise, the story starts sucking even more than it already does. Here it is. Since it is not a suspense or a secret to be revealed at the end of the book, this will not count as a spoiler. There are dead things living underground somewhere and even there, there are two factions led by two sisters. The good group of the undead just live on love. (Please don’t laugh.) The bad faction kills for the pleasure of it. Every seven years, a baby needs to be sacrificed and is taken away from some home and a replacement baby from the undead is kept in its place. The replacements die very young usually. (Wait, are they not undead already, you ask? Yes, they can die again too. This time, apparently, for good. ) But Mackie is special and since he received more love than usual (or some such idiotic reason) he manages to live longer.
Is this weird enough for you? Wait, as you read on, it gets weirder. The undead, we find, sometimes cannot breathe and are in trouble. (Cannot breathe? They are undead, right?) Some with even rotting flesh etc. (Why do they need to breathe?) Suddenly the author seems to remember that possibility: she then divides the dead people into “regular” (my word) dead and restless dead. The latter do not need to breathe. Voila! Problem solved. Want more weirdness? The whole thing is led by Morrigan who looks like a child and behaves like one except when she needs to plan big things but has a mouth full of shark teeth. But she is a good one. (In care you were dying to know.)
Then there is all those teen age issues of love, etc, even for dead people.
Oh please.. her mother was one of the kidnapped people who was restored. And really, that is how the evil Lady and her sister The Morrigan became enemies due to it. Alice, though beautiful is poison for Mackie but Tate, the weird one, is best for him.
When the Church burns, the story turns mildly interesting when he goes to confront the Lady whom no one dares to face. Then drops with a thud again after a brief scene of hope .
The story really picks up only towards the end when you meet the Lady in all her fury and her fearsome assistant, the Cutter and when the kids get hopelessly trapped in the Lady’s lair, with no hopes of escape. The story ends beautifully but you have to wade through almost an entire book of tripe before you get satisfaction.
3/ 10
- – Krishna