I Was A Teen Vampire, er, Vampyre – Review Of House Of Night #1

Stephanie Meyers inflicted Twilight on the world in 2005 and reminded the everyone that light pop horror sells big with teen girls and soccer mommies. Many authors took advantage of this and the market has been pretty well flooded with many books by hopefuls looking for a piece of the emo-oriented action. The House Of Night series, written by mother-daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast and first released in 2007, is one of these.

I didn’t know this, when I picked up House Of Night #1, written by the series creators and adapted by screenwriter Kent Dalian. All I knew was that Dark Horse was putting out another vampire book and it was just a dollar. I read the whole thing from cover to cover thinking, “Wow, I feel like this story, this story that is the first issue of what is going to be an on-going series, seems to be dropping me in the middle of events that I should already know about and feels like a pitch to the CW that got turned down because The Vampire Diaries was going to be similar and cheaper to make.” And then I read the inside of the front cover and discovered that:

This series takes place between scenes from Betrayed, the second novel in the House Of Night series.

Oh.

Spoilers that may or may not include the trials and tribulations associated with being a teenage vampire vampyre after the jump.

Zoey Redbird is your normal 16 year old until one day her DNA betrays her and she finds out she’s one of a special group of adolescents that are known in the House Of Night universe as “fledglings” – baby vampires, well, “vampyres” in this universe because the spelling is cooler or something, who mature into actual vampyres over four years. However, if a fledgling is away from an adult vampyre during this time, they will die (and could possibly die anyway during The Change). So, they all attend an international chain of boarding schools called House Of Night – and thereby supply the rationale for Transylvania 90210.

Also, it should be pointed out that Zoey isn’t just special because she gets to drink blood, look cool and live forever. No, she’s also specially chosen by the vampyre goddess, Nyx, to be her special snowflake on Earth. This has put her at odds with the most popular girl in school, because Zoey’s new status causes the school’s headmaster to…look, does it really matter? It’s a high school soap opera with vampires and the usual attendant drama. See?

How did I get these face tattoos? Wait, I have face tattoos? Son of a...

It’s worth noting that, in addition to the teen angst storyline, the writers are trying to hang the story around the opening stages of the tropes involved with the hero’s journey, interspersed with back story that fleshes out the history of the House Of Night universe, going back to the time of the Vikings. It’s just that with the teenage angst, supernatural boarding school setting and omnipresent vampires, the book feels like Twilight and Harry Potter had a baby – the kind you get when cousins marry.

The art by Joelle Jones and Karl Kerschl is nicely conceived and contributes to the youth oriented feel of the book. The characters, no matter how popular or shunned by the in crowd, are all fresh faced, in shape, and as ready to model for Abercrombie and Fitch as any cartoon character can be. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the ad content of the book had included acne medication or Red Bull or the like but there are actually only two, gaming oriented, pages of ads to the 24 pages of story – which is pretty good value for a book that only costs $1.

Ultimately, for a whole dollar, you could do worse. If you know a young person who likes pop horror, Twilight and the like, or is already a fan of the House Of Night series, this book is definitely for them. If you like your horror books to be less about the troubles of growing up and more about, well, horror, you’ll probably want to steer clear of this one.