Friday, October 26, 2007

Sebastian Rook's The Vampire Plagues








Some historical settings, some mystery, some adventure... and vampires!

Published only in paperback by Scholastic, these books will not appeal to the students who love New Moon and Vampire Kisses. Instead, students who like survival fiction, or books with chases and fighting will find Ben, Jack and Emily's adventures to save the world from the evil that is the vampire Camazotz enthralling.

The cheese factor is pretty high, (I can't say "Camazotz" without giggling) and the writing a bit uneven (some slang and situations that don't ring true for the time period), but the plots are well delineated and the story easy to follow. I read a review that accused this of being too gory and dark for children, and I would disagree with that. R.L. Stine has much more gore, and that completely unaplogetic. Here, children are saving the world from evil. Gore will be involved. Also, students are not bothered by things that are dark. In fact, I think that middle school has a huge developmental stage where children crave dark things. Perhaps it makes their own trauma in middle school seem not so bad.

A fine read. Do need to read all three books to get the whole story, and in order.




1 comment:

  1. Anonymous11:26 PM EDT

    I love Vampire Kisses and New Moon and I still love these books...So by saying that people wont if they like those other books is wrong...I'm just saying this because I believe that you can love any book no matter if you like another series or book...and it offends me to think that people would actually think that. I'm sorry for the criticism but it's just the truth.

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