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A review by mackle13
The Eternal Dawn by Christopher Pike
2.0
2 1/2
So...
I first read 'The Last Vampire' series when I actually was a young adult and I remember liking it a lot, though I didn't remember much about it. Recently I found myself browsing for copies to replace my lost set - and discovered not only that the original 6 were being re-released as the Thirst series (the first two omnibuses), but that Pike had written more in the series! I was excited, and yet nervous. Would the books hold up or would I be disappointed?
Well, anyone who read my first two reviews can see that I'm not exactly as in love with the series as I once was. It's not terrible, though some books are definitely better than others, and the writing is kind of choppy, and the plot's sort of all over the place, but I wasn't bored to tears and I didn't hate them.
But there was that little problem with them being rather repetitive and Sita making the same mistakes over and over and over... but, really, it was with Book 6, where Pike just threw in one too many New Age sci-fi-y thing too many, where I felt like I couldn't really suspend my disbelief anymore... but I got past that, and the ending was, while not perfect, at least satisfying.
But the ending was very, well, final. And I found myself wondering "how in the hell do we continue the series?"
And I have my answer. And while I will say that I'm happy he didn't just ret-con it completely and ignore the fact, I will say that I'm a bit less than thrilled with the whole
But the thing is, while there's a rationale for the various little inconsistencies of character and power and whatnot, it still kept bugging me.
Sita seemed really underpowered compared to what she was before, and some of the characterizations are different in not a great way.
But, really, that's not why it's only getting 2-stars. Well, not the only reason anyway.
Another reason is that while 14 years, give or take, have passed between book 6 being published and book 7 being released, Pike's writing skills don't seem to have improved any. He still tends to be a bit repetitive and slipshod.
Also, this book is a fair bit longer than any of the others. At first I saw this as a good thing - towards the beginning I felt that the slow development was giving him time to flesh out the characters and the plot more than the earlier books. However, that sentiment didn't last and there were parts that were just draggy and sloppy.
Sita still doesn't learn from her mistakes (which I guess you could say could be a positive in the sense that at least some characterization remained consistent), she still leaps before she looks and ends up in positions that are kind of ludicrous, the various twists kind of kept getting more and more ridiculous and just, in general, I was disappointed.
Perhaps the worst, though, was that I wasn't really invested in the characters. In many ways, in this recent reread, I never really was - even though it's told in first-person narration, it's written in that way that always keeps the reader a bit distant - like you're watching something instead of really being inside the character's head. This book suffered from that even more.
Ya know - maybe if I hadn't had such high hopes I'd end up rating it a 3 or 3 1/2 but, as things stand, I just couldn't feel it was more than rather disappointing and nothing more than "ok".
I'm really, really hoping that the next book wows me and sort of makes up for it. After all, this books is, in many ways, a big set up for the pending showdown in the next book. So, who knows, maybe it could totally blow me away.
But I'm skeptical.
So...
I first read 'The Last Vampire' series when I actually was a young adult and I remember liking it a lot, though I didn't remember much about it. Recently I found myself browsing for copies to replace my lost set - and discovered not only that the original 6 were being re-released as the Thirst series (the first two omnibuses), but that Pike had written more in the series! I was excited, and yet nervous. Would the books hold up or would I be disappointed?
Well, anyone who read my first two reviews can see that I'm not exactly as in love with the series as I once was. It's not terrible, though some books are definitely better than others, and the writing is kind of choppy, and the plot's sort of all over the place, but I wasn't bored to tears and I didn't hate them.
But there was that little problem with them being rather repetitive and Sita making the same mistakes over and over and over... but, really, it was with Book 6, where Pike just threw in one too many New Age sci-fi-y thing too many, where I felt like I couldn't really suspend my disbelief anymore... but I got past that, and the ending was, while not perfect, at least satisfying.
But the ending was very, well, final. And I found myself wondering "how in the hell do we continue the series?"
And I have my answer. And while I will say that I'm happy he didn't just ret-con it completely and ignore the fact, I will say that I'm a bit less than thrilled with the whole
Spoiler
notion of Seymour being the writer of the first 6 books and that while they're generally accurate they're not entirely accurate and some things, like the ending, didn't really happen that way. And I guess we're just meant to be happy with never being entirely sure about how much of the first 6 books were accurate.But the thing is, while there's a rationale for the various little inconsistencies of character and power and whatnot, it still kept bugging me.
Sita seemed really underpowered compared to what she was before, and some of the characterizations are different in not a great way.
But, really, that's not why it's only getting 2-stars. Well, not the only reason anyway.
Another reason is that while 14 years, give or take, have passed between book 6 being published and book 7 being released, Pike's writing skills don't seem to have improved any. He still tends to be a bit repetitive and slipshod.
Also, this book is a fair bit longer than any of the others. At first I saw this as a good thing - towards the beginning I felt that the slow development was giving him time to flesh out the characters and the plot more than the earlier books. However, that sentiment didn't last and there were parts that were just draggy and sloppy.
Sita still doesn't learn from her mistakes (which I guess you could say could be a positive in the sense that at least some characterization remained consistent), she still leaps before she looks and ends up in positions that are kind of ludicrous, the various twists kind of kept getting more and more ridiculous and just, in general, I was disappointed.
Perhaps the worst, though, was that I wasn't really invested in the characters. In many ways, in this recent reread, I never really was - even though it's told in first-person narration, it's written in that way that always keeps the reader a bit distant - like you're watching something instead of really being inside the character's head. This book suffered from that even more.
Ya know - maybe if I hadn't had such high hopes I'd end up rating it a 3 or 3 1/2 but, as things stand, I just couldn't feel it was more than rather disappointing and nothing more than "ok".
I'm really, really hoping that the next book wows me and sort of makes up for it. After all, this books is, in many ways, a big set up for the pending showdown in the next book. So, who knows, maybe it could totally blow me away.
But I'm skeptical.