The Saga of Darren Shan: Vampire Rites Trilogy by Darren Shan

As I said in my Vampire Blood Trilogy post, the first trilogy made a good introduction to the world of vampirism and the character of Darren Shan. The Vampire Rites Trilogy is where things get serious and I have to say (despite finishing the series now) that this is my favourite trilogy of the four.

In the Vampire Blood Trilogy, a young boy by the name of Darren Shan is turned into a half vampire by fellow vampire Larten Crepsley in order to save his friend’s, Steve Leonard’s, life. The trilogy follows Darren and Mr Crepsley on various adventures and shows Darren’s adjustment to drinking human blood in order to live.

I’ve tried to limit spoilers as much as possible but there maybe a few inevitable ones lurking about. 

 Proceed with caution

The Vampire Rites Trilogy takes a much more serious turn, thrusting Darren into the wider vampire community. The trilogy consists of Vampire Mountain, Trials of Death and The Vampire Prince.

Vampire Mountain is the journey of Darren, Mr Crepsley, Gavner Purl (another vampire) and two Little People (servants of Mr Tiny – a time lord of some sorts) make to Vampire Mountain so Mr. Crepsley can present Darren to the vampire council. This is of upmost importance as blooding a child like Mr Crepsley did to Darren is not usually permitted amongst the vampires.

During the gruelling trek to Vampire Mountains, Darren encounters a mad bear, tainted with vampaneze blood (vampire cousins who kill those who they drink from). During this battle, a Little Person helps Darren to victory. Little People, who are most see working with ‘Cirque Du Freak’ carrying out menial tasks to keep the show running, are mysterious creatures and not much is known about them, they are mute but are good hunters with a lot of strength. Mr Tiny (their master) sent two of them along with Darren and Mr Crepsley to give an important message to the Vampire Princes. After a tragic accident to his companion the remaining Little Person reveals he can talk and goes by the name of Harkat.

When they finally reach Vampire Mountain, Harkat reveals his message to the Vampire Princes. The message shocks and terrifies the vampires. However, these thoughts are put on hold as Darren is presented to the Princes who, though disagree with Mr Crepsley’s choice to blood him, submit him to a sequence of vampire trials to prove his worth as a vampire.

Trials of Death mainly focus on Darren going through the trials to prove his worth. The trails are exceptionally hard and have caused the deaths of many vampires in the past. As Darren is only half a vampire, the trials are even harder. A vampire general (soon to be prince), named Kurda Smahlt, strongly disagrees with putting Darren through the trails at such a young age. He is also fighting for a new age of peace between the vamipres and the vampaneze, something which many vampires disagree with. Darren discovers that Kurda is in league with vampaneze and plans to bring them to Vampire Mountain.

The Vampire Prince involves Darren exposing Kurda and the beginning of the war against the vampaneze. The majority of this book is taken up with planning and executing a battle against the vampaneze in Vampire Mountain, with Darren getting his first taste of real battle and the harsh realities that come with it.

I mentioned before that this trilogy is my favourite. We gain a massive insight to the world of the vampires and how they live. Again there is more development of characters, Darren is amazed at the shear amount of vampires in existence and the complexities of their way of life, if he agrees with them or not.

We meet various characters who give us a deeper understanding of Mr Crepsley, the vampire who trained him and the other vampires who widely respect him and how his words are highly valued even amongst the Vampire Princes.

What is also interesting about this trilogy is that there is a wide time gap between this one and the previous one. This helps us see Darren’s development more clearly rather than having all of the books take place directly after each other.   Six years have elapsed between Tunnels of Blood and Vampire Mountain, even though Darren only looks a year or so older from when he was blooded, he has mentally matured greatly. This is very apparent in The Vampire Prince where he is disgusted and sickened by the bloodshed between the vampires and the vampaneze.

Trials of Death bears a striking resemblance to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling. Darren, like Harry, is forced to partake in gruelling trials which he is too young to do. However unlike Harry, for Darren, these trials are out of necessity, to prove himself to the vampire community, himself and to not put Mr Crepsley’s name to shame, whereas, Harry in the tri-wizard tournament is kind of just conveniently placed there to witness the rise of Lord Voldemort (don’t get me wrong I do love the Harry Potter books, even though Goblet of Fire is one of my least favourites).

Darren also faces certain death if he fails (in accordance with the traditional vampire ways) whereas 

if Harry failed he would be simply withdrawn. The threat of death makes the meaning behind the trials much more prominent for Darren and having read the other works, it’s highly possible that Shan may just kill off Darren (or any other character for that matter) at any point.

Again, Shan’s writing in this trilogy is absolutely astounding. He gives the 

reader enough information to firmly attach themselves to the characters, even to the extent of if another character likes or dislikes another character, we do too. He also makes us believe that devastation could happen at any minute to any characters, with some highly likable and important characters being killed.

Next:  Vampire War Trilogy

Some people may not like this trilogy as much as there isn’t necessarily as much action as there are in the others but, personally, I really enjoyed it. It fully created the world Darren was in, sharing his emotions and giving us a deeper understanding of the ways of the vampires, with the added tension of knowledge of action yet to happen.

Morning, Noon and Night by Sidney Sheldon

I picked this book up simply because I was bored and it happened to be there. I wasn’t expecting much from this book. I’d never read any Sidney Sheldon before and really didn’t expect to enjoy the book as much as I actually did. However I was bored and wanted to read something, so I read.

Morning, Noon and Night is a crime mystery novel. The plot is a lot more complex than the blurb made it out to be. It all starts off with multi-millionaire Harry Stanford being pursued by a group of three people. Harry, his dog, bodyguard and hired young lady friend set off to lose the followers. Leaving his hired lady friend behind, they board his boat. On this boat Harry dies in a freak thunderstorm, despite being advised by his captain that travelling in the conditions would be risky.

However this only takes up the first few chapters. The rest of the plot is based around Harry’s four children. Three of whom share the same mother, Harry’s wife. The other is the product of an affair Harry had with the children’s nanny, who after ran away with her child to escape the publicity after the scandal.  

It is strongly pointed out that Harry was a poor father and sent his three children away to separate boarding schools and constantly lowered their self esteem when he did see them. Because of this his three children openly hate him and disconnect themselves as much a possible from his name. Tyler, the eldest son became a well known court judge, Kendall, the daughter, became a famous fashion designer and Woody grew into a nine hole polo player. When they hear of their father’s death, they are all eager to get their hands on their share of his money.

Everything seems set for the three of them to get an equal share of their father’s money, until Harry’s other child; Julia comes along to rightfully claim her share. This is as far as I’m willing to go with the plot as there are so many twists and turns in the novel, I do not wish to spoil them. 

Morning, Noon and Night is amazingly well written with Sheldon leading the reader on to believe certain parts of the plot then suddenly chucking in a totally unexpected twist, making the story much more interesting. However, there are certain points where you question character’s motives throughout the novel but all these questions are cleared up rather nicely by the story’s conclusion.

I enjoyed the novel’s ending as it was bitter sweet with justice being served with an addition of disappointment. There is only one minor fault that I found with this novel and that is the romance between Julia and the family lawyer Steve. Personally, I found it to happen all a bit quickly and was the only part of the novel I found far too predictable. Throughout the story it is often pointed out that Julia is single. There is also an entire chapter containing some sort of montage of Julia going on various dates with men her flatmate knows, all leading to failure. Then all of a sudden once she’s in Boston she meets Steve with whom she has an instant connection with and proceeds to live with him whilst legalities are being sorted out. I’m not saying that the romance between the two is unrealistic; I just feel it was far too expected and easily predicted in comparison to the rest of the plot points.

 

Sheldon also does a fantastic job in character development. There are multiple chapters dedicated to each of the Stanford children, all are engrossing and even if they don’t seem it at the time, related to the overall outcome of the novel. These chapters make you feel somehow attached to the characters and have more sympathy with them when disaster strikes. For me, it was one of the best things about the book. All the children’s individual story lines link in with the overall plot. All of this is done pretty much flawlessly with a great flow to it.

I found Morning, Noon and Night a surprisingly entertaining read. It was also quick and easy, there wasn’t much you really had to think about you just had let Sheldon take you through. It was a definite change to what I would usually read but I’m very glad I did. It’s not a revolutionary piece of literature but it was enjoyable nonetheless and made me want to read more by Sidney Sheldon at some point.

50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James

I chose to read this book before I knew what a massive ‘hit’ it had become. I ordered this book just over a month ago as I had never read an erotic fiction book before and was curious as to what they were like. I also didn’t know that this book was based on an online Twilight fan fiction, if I had known this I probably wouldn’t have bought it as I do not rate the Twilight ‘saga’ in any way (even though the poor acting in the films amuses me). However, I decided to ignore this and went in to read 50 Shades of Grey with an open mind.

Warning: May contain SPOILERS!

The premise of 50 Shades of Grey is rather simple, Anastasia Steele, an English graduate, meets dashing high-up business man Christian Grey. They become infatuated with each other; however Grey tells her that she doesn’t want to get caught up in his world and to leave him, despite turning up at her place of work and taking her out for coffee. It is revealed that Grey is heavily into BDSM and has his own ‘playroom’ full of implements of that nature including whips, riding crops, floggers, chains and the like. Steele is of course shocked by this but her infatuation for Grey makes her stay. It is revealed that Steele is a virgin; this is shocking to Grey and seems quite taken aback that Steele still has her cherry intact. Then he does something which he states is out of character and has something called ‘vanilla sex’ with her, which to us normal people is just plain, ordinary, enjoyable sex. There is a heavy focus in the sex scenes on ‘foil packets’, which James uses to refer to condoms (can’t really argue with the promotion of safe sex). Things go on like this for a while, with the interruptions of arguments which end in intercourse wherever they happen to be at the time. I say they go on like this for a while; they go on like this for the remainder of the book until she leaves him at the end.

There isn’t much else to say about the overall plot really, they just have sex in different places, the kitchen, the bathroom, her bedroom, his bedroom, the ‘playroom’, various hotel bathrooms etc and to be honest it gets boring very quickly, in fact it was never really interesting to begin with. I feel this is something to do with James’ poor standard of writing. I find that she is very repetitive in her writing style. Common occurrences are, Steele saying “holy crap”, ‘foil packets’, the constant lip biting leading to sex and the sex scenes are very similar to each other, even the ones in the ‘playroom’ which you’d expect to be exciting and new but no, the worst it really gets (or the scene I found the least boring) is with Steele tied up and blindfolded on a bed with Grey doing various things to her.

The most irritating things about the way the sex scenes are written is that the ‘action’ is often interrupted by Steele’s sub conscious and inner goddess. James decides to personify these concepts and fails miserably. They appear on pretty much every page, with the inner goddess doing crazy acrobatics whenever things are about to get a bit kinky and the sub conscious seems to be the sensible side of Steele’s thoughts. Both are irritating and interrupt the mood when things have the opportunity to get a bit steamy.   I also feel that James only put them in the book as a device to show some sort of internal struggle Steele was having with herself, that also failed.

The BDSM aspect of the so called plot seems to only feature this contract that Grey gets all his submissives to sign. The contract includes items such as “15.22 The Submissive shall not look directly into the eyes of the Dominant except when specifically instructed to do so. The Submissive shall keep her yes cast down and maintain a quiet and respectful bearing in the presence of the Dominant.” As well as sticking to a strict food list, which is apparently a massive deal breaker for Steele even though we never get to understand why as we never get to see a copy of this food list and she never explains why it’s such a big deal to her. There is also seems to be some big debate in Steele’s mind if she should sign the contract or not even though we all no she will and it the contract even has a the get out clause having a trial period and she can ask to leave the contract at any point, so I didn’t see it as too much of a problem.

Despite all this, I found myself sitting for hours at a time reading 50 Shades of Grey I am unsure as to why though, it’s poorly written to the point of hilarity, you can’t relate to Steele in anyway shape or form, you relate more to Grey and find him a much more sensible person compared to Steele’s immature and argumentative attitude. I say that but I feel the whole idea of the book is for its readers to fall in love with Grey, I didn’t, I just felt pity for having to put up with Steele’s childishness and also slight annoyance at him for staying with her whilst she was being a moany bitch and the constant comparisons to Tess of the D’Ubervilles and other literature which have pretty much nothing to do with her situation (suppose it was James’ way of making Steele seem intelligent or something).

I’d say give it a read and see what you think, even if you don’t like it you can learn to laugh at it, my boyfriend and I spent a long time laughing at how poor it was (not sure that was James’ intention for the readers). I still enjoyed it as it was easy to read and kind of a guilty pleasure read, which by no means suggests that it’s a good book. I think that it may have done a bit better with me if it was a parody of erotic fiction, making it overly silly and comedic rather than trying and failing to make it serious. I am curious about 50 Shades Darker and 50 Shades Freed but not so much that I’d go and buy them after hearing roughly what happens in them. There are also rumours of the series being made into a film possibly starring Robert Pattinson . . . don’t think I’ll be going to see that somehow.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

 I had always been curious about this series of books as they seemed to be a massive hit a few years ago when they were first released. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is the first of Larsson’s millennium trilogy. There have been several film adaptations of the book, the latest being released last year starring Daniel Craig (another reason for my curiosity of the trilogy to increase) with the first film being produced by a Swedish film company (Yellow Brid) as Larsson himself is Swedish and the English versions of the books have been translated from Swedish.  

The book focuses on a journalist called Mikael Blomkvist who is a part owner of the Millennium magazine alongside his lover Erika Berger. We start off with the revelation that Blomkvist has just lost a libel case against billionaire monopolist Hana-Erik Wennerstrom and is therefore sentenced to three months imprisonment, his career as a journalist in tatters.

We then are taken to surveillance company Milton Security which is run by Dragan Armansky. We gain an insight into his thoughts and affections for a rather strange employee by the name of Lisbeth Salander, who, it is overly, stated that she is different, sticks out from the rest of the employees and would’ve been sacked from any other company. She is however incredibly skilled at her job, researching into other people’s lives as a personal investigator. Armansky is approached by Dirch Frode,  a lawyer acting on behalf of his client, he wants a thorough investigation into Mikael Blomkvist.

Moving back to Blomkvist we see more of the aftermath of the court case and realise how he will never be trusted as a journalist again. He is then approached by Frode to accompany him to meet with his client. His client, Henrik Vanger is an elderly man who wants Blomkvist to investigate the murder of his great niece Harriet who went missing 36 years previously. Blomkvist is offered a substantial sum of money as well as evidence to ruin Wennerstrom, he, to the upset of Berger, accepts the job and moves to the island with Vanger to investigate the case.

I will leave it there for describing the plot as I do not want to spoil the highly gripping story that follows and believe me you don’t want the rest spoiled for you.

Also, just as a quick warning, the book does contain scenes of rather brutal rape and torture so if that would make you feel uncomfortable I would recommend reading with caution, however these scenes are written very well in a sensitive manner. Interestingly Larsson was inspired to write this book through a personal feeling of regret as when he was 15 years old he witnessed a girl getting raped and regretting not helping her, which probably would explain why the rape scenes are written with sensitivity and affects the reader so.

One very important part of the book besides the main plot of Harriet case is the character development a Lisbeth Salander, as you may have been able to guess, Salander joins Blomkvist on his mission to find out what happened to Harriet. The pair at first the pair don’t get on too well as Salander is very cautious and sceptical but she is driven through the pure curiosity of the case to get an answer to the mystery of Harriet. Salander who is previously described by the Swedish government to have various mental health issues and is under the care of a guardian provided by the authorities , speaks little of her life and doesn’t let anybody into it. However the, to Salander, remarkable way in which Blomkvist introduces himself to her (he barges into her house with coffee and breakfast) takes her by surprise and from that point on her affections steadily grow for him.

This provides a commentary on the possible feminist/misogynistic reading of this book. The title itself can be translated to men who hate women, which obviously suggests misogyny and implies violence against women.  The book portrays some women as strong, Berger and Salander but then some women as weak, the women who were murdered. It also portrays men in a mixed way, for example Blomkvist wouldn’t have been able to solve the mystery without the help of Salander, on the other hand Salander is being oppressed by her guardian Nills Bjurman. However Salander breaks triumphantly breaks free from this oppression, showing the reader how strong she is personally and how strong women overall can be.

The majority of the book is well written and easy enough to follow with the inclusion of a  family tree for the Vanger family, which I had to constantly refer back to see how each character was related. This might’ve been a hassle to some people as there are so many members of the Vanger family alone it is hard to keep a track of who is related to who, I personally enjoyed it as it engrossed me further in the story and helped me to related to Blomkvist as he was trying to solve the mystery at the same rate the reader is.

As you may have been able to notice, I 

thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to read the sequels in the millennium trilogy The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and The Girl who Played with Fire. These two books also follow Blomkvist and Salander on other cases and I thoroughly look forward to reading them.  I have also watched the 2011 film version of the book after finishing it. I feel it was a rather accurate version of the story but doesn’t include some of the vital parts of the story and details of the characters which made me enjoy the book so much.