P.C. and Kristin Cast – Marked

Zoey Redbird is a sixteen year old girl who thinks she is just like any other teenager until one day a tracker comes to her school and marks her. This means that Zoey is going to go through the change and hopefully become a vampire (not everyone that starts to change is able to make it and they die) and she has to go and join the vampire school “House of Night” to learn the ways of the vampire.

To be honest I’m not entirely sure what to make of this book. It was quite compulsive reading, I read it in less than a day, but I’m not really sure why as not a great deal actually happened. I think this book is the equivalent of eating golden syrup straight out of the tin - it tastes nice but it has no nutritional value and too much can leave you feeling a bit sick.

I quite liked Zoey although she was a bit irritating at times with her holier than thou attitude. Some of the other characters may prove to be quite interesting but it’s hard to tell at this stage as there wasn’t much character development beyond Zoey. This is just the first in the series though so I would hope that in future books we find out a bit more about the other characters.

The story is an interesting and different take on vampires. They are rather too light and fluffy here for my liking though. I don’t mind a bit of romanticising vampires (I love the Sookie Stackhouse books) but I do like them to still have that element of danger. The vampires in this book were not at all scary or threatening and I felt a bit disappointed by that.

I will probably read the next book but it’s not one that I am going to rush out to buy immediately.