Literature So Okay it's Average: The BOOK!
Okay, so... I am actually OKAY with this series.
I discovered it when I was in my local bookstore a few years ago, and at first I was hooked... Until Chosen, where I really couldn't be arsed about Zoey's plethora of dudes. Seriously, the only character I can say for sure won't end up with our "Supur Speshul" Mary Sue protagonist is the gay kid.
However... I like it.
Is the series Narm filled and a total Cliché Storm? Yes.
Is our protagonist a special snowflake? Check
Is the main villain an evil, moustache twirling villain with a Freudian Excuse? Check, check, check~!
Even though this story reads like My Immortal without the horrendous spelling and grammar... I don't really know why, but I like it. Really, this series is a Guilty Pleasure
Literature No just... Please no...
Zoey is just... Not a nice girl. Okay, it's like this: Imagine Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way with Eric Cartman's personality. With that being said the authors *insist* on writing her as the ideal high school girl and the fact they think this is how a teen girl acts is ignorant. I anything this book teaches it's normal for teen girls to be super mean and everyone will girl LOVE you for it.
First, Zoey's friend Kayla (remember her?). Instead of *trying* to make amends with her friend she just drops her and we hear that Kayla is a skank now. That brings me to my next point; Zoey is just a freakin' hypocrite! She shames Aphrodite for being a slut (has two boyfriends at two seperare times) while she has not one, not two, but THREE boyfriends AT ONCE.
Next, the racism and homophobia. The casts go on and about how IT'S OKAY TO BE GAY and IT'S OKAY THAT BLACK PEOPLE DATE OTHER RACES, OKAY! Yet Damien is horribly a walking stereotype, and Zoey kills two black people because they are "stereotypical black guys." Um.. Okay Zoey. Oh, and btw if you're a Christian you are a narrow-minded, intolerant meanie! Uuuugghhh! You are terrible! You don't agree with Zoey!!
Next I got so tired of the Casts opinions of EVERYTHING. You starve yourself and hate your body, you're a freak. That's it. You are a big FREAK. You do pot, you are a stupid waste of space. Yep. That's what you are.
Heck, we even get Zoey's opinion on *eyeliner* Girls, you can't wear too much. Zoey says no and Zoey's word is law. If you don't agree with Zoey you are wrong and you should be outcasted. You hear that? OUTCASTED YOU UNWORTHY!!
Long story short: I could go on and on about how terrible this book is. It is so interesting and it sucks because of Zoey and the Casts terrible writing. It's such a sad waste. Zoey makes me seriously angry. Her bigotry and self-righteousness made me want to cry tears of rage and go on a swearing rampage. So if you like a mean, bigoted Mary Sue, then you'll looooove Zoey and this book.
Oh lastly: The spelling of the word "ho" is cringeworthy.
Literature A potentially interesting plot wasted on vapid characters and romances
I saw this series touted on the Gush/Literature page as having great characters and world-building. Intrigued, I borrowed the books from my library.
After reading them, I have to ask: Just which series was this gusher reading?
HON isn't all bad: I liked Aphrodite's Character Development and Stevie Rae's subplot, and the vampyre mythology and tantalizing hints of a deeper plot kept me reading for five books even when many things were beginning to annoy me.
However, I gave up halfway through Hunted. Why? Let me list the reasons:
- Zoey is the epitome of the meant-to-be-spunky-but-is-just-whiny-and-annoying heroine. Trying to make a flawed yet likeable character by having her wangst about how she can't choose among the three hot guys chasing her and then cheat on her boyfriend with the other two after she assured him that she wasn't going to be a "ho" will not work, especially when you drop her into the exact same situation two books later with her having learned nothing whatsoever from her past experience.
- The Romantic Plot Tumors. Dear lord, the Romantic Plot Tumors. Not only do they make Zoey immensely unlikeable with all the wangst and hypocrisy, they overshadow the far more interesting vampyre subplots and imply that all teen girls think about are boys, because who cares about vampyre conspiracies when there are hawt guys for readers to drool over?
- The other characters, with the partial exceptions of Aphrodite and Stevie Rae, are all caricatures and stereotypes. Zoey's friends have just one or two traits each and exist solely to be her adoring fanclub (except for Damien, who gets to show how ~progressive~ the series is for having a gay character), and the Big Bad would have a moustache to twirl if she was male.
- The insulting attempts to make the characters sound like "real" teens by inserting pop culture references and cringe-inducing "hip" terms in every single damned thing they say. It smacks of the Casts talking down to their audience and forgetting the "adult" in "young adult".
Somewhere underneath all this is a good plot trying to get out, but after Hunted I couldn't be arsed to keep on reading with Zoey and almost everything else getting on my last nerve. Gushing about this? I think not.
Literature First Book: It is NOT YA!!!
Zoey Redbird is a Mary Sue, far worse then Bella Swan will ever be. Unlike Bella, she doesn't hide behind her fake Fatal Flaw(s), the authors try to pass her off as perfect. Her attitude though is far worse then Bella and she is one of the most hypocritical teenagers I have ever met.
Cold hard fact about the series is, while the Casts claim this is the way teenagers act this day and age, not only is this not true, parents who pick up the book will be realing with the mere idea of their sons and daughters acting like the kids in this book.
The book makes it seem all right to belittle your peers and call them names despite the fact this is not justified by any given logic. Particulary when said word fits Zoey better and she is allowed to get away with the sleezy behavior she puts forth. Did I just say sleezy?
The content in this book is the kind that I would not give even to a mature thirteen year old, and my opinion is, while YA can be geared up to the twenty-one year old age bracket, if you can't give it to the youngest in the grouping, something is wrong.
Finaly point is, there is no plot to this series. There is no major conflict, things just happen.
Literature Worse Then Bad....Then Worse Again
Holy crap is this series bad. I was one of those people that actually enjoyed Twilight for it's fantasy elements, even while recognizing it wasn't a good series as a whole.
House of Night takes all those stereotypes and ups them to 11. Heck, even 'Vampire' wasn't 'kewl' enough, and had to be changed to Vampyre for some godforsaken reason. If anything, I'm just surprised there aren't more apostrophes. I guess Va'm'py're didn't make it through the editing process.
The main character is the worst mary sue of all time, the supporting cast are caricatures, the plot doesn't exist, and the entire thing reads like bad Twilight fanfiction. Honestly, I've say this from some of this pixels and having read quite a few bad fanfics in my time: If you removed the editing job and returned the countless spelling and grammar mistakes that very surely were originally there, you could post this on fanfiction.net and easily get maybe...50 reviews. 100, if you're lucky.
This book is so bad. Good Lord, it's terrible. Never, Ever, EVER, read this series.