Mood:  Murder 1
Music: All the Pretty Faces by the Killers

ebooks are fancy

The book starts out with Elena writing in her journal about her foreboding for the day ahead.  Initially I think this is something we can all relate to.  But in almost the same sentence Elena is practically telling us how silly she is to feel this way because she is so beautiful and vapid.
Just starting out senior year of high school, our heroine is the cliché image of perfection.  Porcelain skin and blond hair topped off with piercing blue eyes the color of Lapis Lazuli.  Elena is also the queen bee of her high school.  As such her clique is filled with one or two friends she doesn’t deserve of much greater character than her, several gawkers and wannabes and at least one angry rival.  Sure.  We can all relate to perfect popular Elena who discards boys at the rate that my brain cells have committed suicide at the prospect of trying to relate to this megaton bitch.
So maybe, Elena doesn’t start out as the most promising heroine.  But at least the author is honest about Elena’s beauty and sway over her male peers.  Whereas, in Twilight, the heroine has such low self esteem that she can’t even realize that she is the hottest piece of ass in school and that this is why guys fawn over her and girls wish to maneuver against her.  Setting aside how impossible it is for 99.9% of female readers to relate to being breathtakingly beautiful in high school (whether they realize it or not), I have to tell you I prefer the manipulative proactive Elena to the passive victim role glorified in Twilight.
As I struggled not to throw my iPod, on which I am reading these books, across the room in disgust, my struggle intensifies with the introduction to the undead paramour, Stefan Salvatore.
At his introduction I can already tell that Stefan is going to be the now typical self-hating vampire that we all know and no longer love.
Vampyric ennui was personified in tragic perfection in Anne Rice’s portrayal of Louis in Interview with a Vampire: the Vampire Chronicles.  I have never read another depiction of a vampire’s disenchantment with his nature that didn’t make me want to immediately stake them to put them out of my misery.  Authors are trying too hard to cram what has become a tired cliché down our throats.
Stefan redeems himself and saves my iPod from a brush with disaster by flashing back to his human youth in Renaissance Italy.  Alas, during that brief flash I found I preferred his arrogant brother who had a backbone .  Even the introduction of the doppleganger Katherine, who seems to be wonderfully duplicitous from her first scene, is ruined by Stefan’s internal pouting.
Before reading on, I had to take a break.  By this time I had an extreme homicidal dislike of the female protagonist.  I don’t usually have such strong reactions to fictional characters after only a couple chapters.  But this character epitomizes every evil of adolescence.
A friend of mine tells me that these books are about Elena’s transformation.  But honestly, I just want her to die.  I’d rather read about pale red-haired Bonnie with her bad late ‘80s/early ‘90s perm.  Because she at least seems nice and quirkily flawed.  And all this by just 16 pages in.
When Elena dumps nice guy Matt who is obviously too good for her she is already on the prowl to land Italian hottie Stefan.  Stefan rejects her in a public manner by seeming to not even register her.  It is the biggest insult Elena has ever suffered.  And I genuinely believe that the death of her parents ranks lower for her.  So she plots anew with her friends at the grave of her parents to snag Stefan no matter what.
We are treated with a flashback to the details of Elena’s snubbing from the perspective of Stefan to see that he is struggling not to make a nice snack out of Elena in the middle of 7th period History.
At this point I found myself wondering if Stephenie Meier actually read this book.  I then recalled when the Vampire Diaries became a tv-series and Twitards were saying that it was a blatant rip-off of Twilight.
Apparently Twitards can read but can’t use google and also lack the ability to decipher the cryptic marking on the inside of  their books right before the story in which original publishing dates are written.
By the end of Chapter five the story has FINALLY picked up enough steam to keep me reading.  Creepy Powers are brewing.  Ominous signs lead to desperate  fleeing from unspeakable unnamable evil in the cemetery.  Stefan actually feeds on a homeless guy, which is okay.  Because if Calvinism has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that God considered the homeless man worthless because our lot is life is predestined according to our righteousness.  Also, we all know that homeless people were put on this earth to be the outlet for all our angst and distress with our own condition.  So don’t worry Stefan.  We understand.  You need your strength to be a stud on the football team anyway. Fist bump, dude.  Fist bump.
Also, we get more spooky hintings about Bonnie’s latent witchy powers, the reveal that Katherine is/was a vampire and the consequent set up for Stefan and Damon’s contentious relationship.  And  we also learn from Bonnie’s sister, who is a nurse, that the homeless man that was “attacked” didn’t die but may not regain consciousness.  So we are allowed to safely contemplate the hawtness of Stefan again without worrying about him eating us in all the wrong ways.  It’s kewl if an Italian guy wants to literally devour me so long as he munches on the indigent as a kind of bloodlust prophylactic so we can be together.

I hope you come back for an update on my reaction to chapters six through ten.  I promise to be just as snarky.

Mood: Depraved Indifference
Music: Sort Of by Silversun Pickups

Chapter six catches us three weeks after Elena and her friends ran like a pack of, well, scared teenagers out of the cemetery. The homeless man that was attacked woke up and started ranting about “eyes in the dark.” Of course, everyone thinks he’s insane. Not one level-headed person suggests he was attacked by some nocturnal animal with light bouncing off the tapetum at the back of it’s retina.
Tapetum. Go ahead and google it. I’ll wait.

Not that rationale enters into the equation at all as he is more or less senseless. Remind me, when I get ravaged (again in all the wrong ways) by a vampire not to cry out some oblique clue. But then again, I’m not poetic enough for obscure comments in the moment. I’d be shouting, “Fucker bit me!” History will not recall me as the coquettish ingénue I so wish I really were.

Elena has come up with a plan to ensnare Stefan that is so brilliant and original that it is almost guaranteed to work… in middle school. Plan-B, as she refers to her new avenue of romantic attack, is to salvage her image and make Stefan jealous? I’m not really clear on this last point. She makes up a fake older boyfriend “Jean Claude”. Of course, she met him in France over her summer break. Oh Elena. You are so relatable. Because everyone I knew spent their 17th summer on the French Riviera. Anyway, Jean Claude sends Elena flowers and love letters. And all the school seems to have forgotten the snubbing that Elena experienced from Stefan.

Frankly, when I was in high school, I didn’t know or care about the social maneuverings of the popular crowd, So it’s almost a sure bet that nobody beyond the people lingering in 7th period History when it happened even know anything about it.

I’m also not sure how or if this is supposed to make Stefan jealous. Maybe I’ve watched Clueless too many times and am reading too far into Elena’s actions. Because development of jealousy is dependent on the presence of desire. And Stefan’s action, to the outside world, indicate a total lack of desire. In fact, he hasn’t said a word to Elena since that day.

Internally, Elena is obsessing about Stefan to the detriment of most other lucid thoughts. We see the beginnings of a very healthy attraction here that I hope teenage girls will adopt for themselves en masse. It’s the kind of attraction that breeds Erotomania and immolation of small hand crafted poppets and keepsakes. Keepsakes like the rag he wipes his sweat on during athletic practice or the loose hair in his comb. Personally, I like my teenage girls on the obsessed feral side.

Elena has noticed that her rival Caroline seems to have dropped off the radar and, frankly, doesn’t care. Oh, Elena. What kind of queen bee are you not to know that this is trouble. Rivals don’t declare themselves just to give up. And everyone seems to be staying away from Stefan. This may or may not have to do with Elena’s little group starting a rumor that he is a narc. Classy. But our heroine in focusing her obsession away from herself has actually managed to acquire the extraordinary (or in normal people: ordinary) ability to notice other people’s actions that don’t relate to her. She sees that Stefan’s otherness and isolation from the crowd is of his own making.

The only person Stefan even seems friendly with is Elena’s Ex, Matt. I like the Yaoi turn this implies but it will fail deliver. When Elena asks Matt about Stefan we are again treated with a painful display of how good Matt is and how much Elena doesn’t deserve him, even as a friend. Matt is insightful about Stefan’s isolation as an outward projection of his internal loneliness. And when Elena uses this clue as the lynchpin of her new plan Matt FINALLY calls her out on her manipulative ways. Unfortunately, the instant that Elena looks hurt and gets all watery eyed, Matt crumbles and acquiesces to do anything she wants. All she wants is for Matt to make sure Stefan attends homecoming. Classy, Elena. Ask the guy who still loves you to help you land the guy he is certain you dumped him for.

When Elena and her friends are dressing for the Homecoming dance we learn that dark-horse Elena is the Homecoming Queen and her friends are her court. I have to say this shocked me almost as much as the next paragraph lauding Elena’s beauty and perfection. Which is to say the only thing that really surprised me was how little blood there actually is when you try to scratch out your own eyes.

At Homecoming everyone crowds around beautiful Elena as though she is actual royalty. The extreme sycophantic nature of nearly everyone at the high school in respect to Elena is disturbing.

Our queen gathers herself in all her cool perfection and singles out Stefan to ask him to dance. Sure that in this instance he can’t refuse. And just as it seems she may actually have maneuvered successful, BAM! Caroline, the rival, slides her arm through Stefan’s and makes it clear who Stefan is there with and why she has been MIA recently. She has been laying the groundwork for this humiliation. Bravo, Caroline. *golf clap*

Elena then delights us by showing the emotional maturity of a gnat and doing all the stupid things we would never do. She alienates her friends, flirts with every boy at the dance, and encourages the attentions of all the wrong people. So that when she leaves Homecoming with drunken delinquent Tyler and another couple to go to the hottest make-out spot in town, the cemetery, none of Elena’s friends know where she went. So when trusty Matt comes to Bonnie and Meredith with the news that Elena left the dance with Tyler I could have high-fived Bonnie for her “So what?” attitude. But eventually the Scoobies set out looking for her Majesty, unsure of where she went.

At the cemetery we are treated to some tomb desecration, creepy hallucinations and attempted date rape. If I had known Homecoming could end this way I would have gone at least once. And while Elena is getting her pretty dress torn by an inept lothario, Stefan is making his way to the cemetery, drawn on by his preternatural ability to sense Elena’s growing fear. But on his way to rescue the damsel in distress, Stefan gets the vapors. Vampires are so delicate. And yet he still manages to beat Tyler senseless while offering a monologue on the virtues of being a gentleman. He nearly kills the would be rapist by shaking him like a baby until Elena screams for him to stop. Beaten, and potentially hemorrhaging, Tyler is left lying limply at his grandfather’s headstone and Stefan escorts Elena out of the cemetery.

Stefan and Elena go back to his boarding house and while Elena is cleaning up in the restroom she exits her state of shock and slides into righteous indignation. She precedes to try to push every button she can to irritate him in what we hope will be the catalyst for him to decide that rescuing her again will not be worth it.

At some point I am assuming that I will develop some kind of empathy for Elena. I mean the girl was publicly embarrassed and nearly raped. But when all her actions are accounted for, the scales heavily tip in favor of me slapping her around for a good half an hour. And so, when Elena demands less obvious answers to the question of “why do you hate me?” from Stefan, we basically get this: “you look like a dead chick I know. get away from me. let’s make out.” Sure, there was bit more exposition, but not much. And then we fade to black on the approach of a first kiss.

As Elena’s friends and assumed-eunuch ex-boyfriend look for her, they find the girl who was with Elena in the cemetery. Vickie is an apparent victim of some evil eyes-in-the-dark attack. They call off their search for Elena to take Vickie to a doctor and call the police. Which is all and good because the only danger Elena is now in involves forgetting to come up for air.

I like to call what the author describes next as a Lovegasm. All doubts are erased. Two hearts meet. Tenderness and intensity combine and all walls fall away. There is complete acceptance and in the distance there is a full on Double Rainbow. Plus, they make out.

The Lovegasm is not an uncommon writing device. It makes us feel like these characters were meant for each other. It also helps us to destroy our own romantic prospects by building false expectations that no one can meet. Except me. I am that awesome. Call me.

Stefan takes Elena home, like gentleman, and they encounter a gaggle of concerned friends, family and police officers. And when the Scoobies recount what Vickie told them about her attack, Stefan reacts by going all sulky and trying to internally revoke the Lovegasm. The Queen is not amused and refuses to let him distance himself from her.

At the start of chapter nine Stefan is driving “home” and comparing Elena to Katherine. Somehow Elena comes across favorably. No accounting for taste.
All this reverie causes Stefan to flashback while he is driving. I highly caution against having flashbacks while driving unless you are a vampire. I hear it’s nearly as dangerous as texting while driving. In his flashback Stefan recalls being deeply infatuated with Katherine and being proud of his secret knowledge about what she is. And since Stefan is dumb, and written by a woman, when he learns that Damon also knows Katherine is a vampire he is not hurt by Katherine’s actions, rather he is enraged at his brother. Like how women will fight for a man who has played them both.

Back in the real world, Stefan worries that he is blackout drinking. Not really a good thing to start in high school.  He didn’t think he drank enough from the homeless guy to have done him any real harm, And he is afraid that when he got weak and disoriented in the cemetery on his way to rescue Elena that he may have been the one to attack Vickie. What is a self-hating vampire to do?

The following morning Elena is on cloud nine. She makes up with her friends and her perfect life is perfectly perfect in all it’s perfection. She then enlists the companionship of her friends to go calling on the Attack victim from the previous night. And when Elena questions the practically catatonic girl she reacts much like we all do at Elena’s intrusion into our lives. Vickie thrashes violently, screams “NO!” and calls Elena evil. All perfectly natural. Unphased, Elena then decides to drag her friends on a twenty minute walk to the boarding house where Stefan lives and then insists that they wait outside. Lovegasm.

Back at school Stefan can’t seem to decide if he wants to love Elena or protect her from his love. It would be very noble if it weren’t done to death. His distance would give Elena insecurities if she weren’t so perfect. And as such, she is blissful in her love. And I am nauseated. Thankfully a dark dangerous stranger shows up and makes it known to Elena that his intents are focused on her. And despite his considerable charm and preternatural charisma Elena is able to resist him and runs away. Chapter ten ends with Elena fleeing in the darkness.

It’s too much to ask that she stumbles and breaks her neck.

Come back for the thrilling conclusion to the Vampire Diaries – The Awakening.  I have to.

Mood: Accessory to Murder
Music: Dead Things by Emiliana Torrini

Okay kids, are you ready for this? It’s time we wrap this puppy up.

When we last left Elena she was running frantically through the darkened hallways of her high school to get away from a dark handsome stranger who radiates danger and has mastered the art of the sardonic smile.  This is how we know Elena is a fictional character, the running away bit.  And when Elena rejoins her friends she neglects to mention this stranger to anyone.

She splits her time between planning the school haunted house with her friends Bonnie & Meredith (Does no one else go to this school? ) and nurturing her frustration over the seemingly growing distance between Stefan and herself.  At times she manages to combine the two activities.  Like when she goes to Bonnie’s home to work on the haunted house.  She manages to both worry about the survival of her burgeoning relationship while gabbing about costume plans.  Here’s a shocker for you:  Elena is going to look beautiful.

In order to put Elena’s mind at rest Bonnie tells her about a spell of sorts that they can do to show Elena her future husband.  She goes through a ritual of silently setting a place at a table and at midnight calls “come in” to invite her future husband’s apparition to appear.  The person before Elena at that moment is the dark dangerous stranger from before.  Elena gets indignant at his very real intrusion and once again is able to resist his very considerable charms as she demands that he leaves.  He goes and very likely is the one who steal her diary that night.  Though she would later fail to put together his appearance with the disappearance of her diary.  And once again Elena fails to tell anyone about him.

Back in sad sanguine sap land Stefan goes about feeding on forest animals in the hopes that it will quench his thirst so that he never accidentally blacks out and feeds on Elena.  Elena.  Katherine.  FLASHBACK! (I love these)

Basically, what all these flashbacks have taught me is that Damon and Stefan are morons and that Katherine is really good at fooling enlightened men into thinking she is innocent against all evidence to the contrary

Halloween night Stefan comes to pick up Elena.   And when he sees Elena in her costume it has the opposite effect on him that she was hoping.  Her custom made gown authentic to the Italian Renaissance (Which by the way is beautiful and highlights her perfection perfectly) puts him in a mind of Katherine.  The effect is not a good one.  And the fitful menacing weather seems the perfect compliment to the silent drive to the high school.

I can’t tell you how many undead boyfriends I had to chuck by the wayside because they couldn’t get over their undead ex-girlfriends.  It’s getting rather ridiculous.  What does a girl have to do to keep her vampyric paramours interested?  Open a vein?

At the haunted house everyone crowds around Elena and admires her. My hatred is renewed.  And Stefan has to use his Powers to compel a pain-in-the-ass faculty member to go along with playing a sacrifice victim  lying in a pool of karo syrup.  I don’t really see what the problem was.  Bonnie, who was in charge of that scene, must not have been on top of her game.  I personally have no problem convincing men to let me smear syrup all over them.

When the poor faculty member ends up very much dead at the start of the haunted house all hell breaks loose.  The would-be rapist Tyler is back and this time he rouses a good old fashioned mob with a desire to hold the mysterious “violent” outsider Stefan responsible for all the attacks that have happened since his arrival.

When Matt is able to talk to Elena after the police have arrived he tells her that Stefan made it out safely and asked him to take care of her, Elena knows something is wrong.  She sneaks out of the gym and high-tails her ass to the boarding house and ascends the ladder to the Widow’s Walk.

For those of you unfamiliar with what a widow’s walk is I can probably guess you aren’t from the East Coast.  A widow’s walk is a rooftop deck, of sorts.  It’s more common amongst homes in older coastal communities.  And when I mature into my old age as a creepy spinster I hope to retire to a home with one.  Back to the story.

Up on the rundown widow’s walk with the wind blowing wildly about Elena comes to witness Stefan’s true nature as he feeds on a mourning dove. And for the first time in her life Elena reacts with what I believe is an appropriate emotion.  Horror.  And as she retreats in terror from the monster she loved she stumbles and falls off of the widow’s walk.

Look, I get being terrified.  But if you are going to live in a “horror” novel then you should at least learn to be a little more aware of your environment.  I never would have fallen off that roof in my retreat.  That’s just pathetic Elena.  But then again, not falling keeps the odds low that a strong virile vampire will save me.  And in Elena’s case a virile vampire didn’t save her.  Stefan did.

Fear gives way to shock and then shock to wonder.  Then Elena is won over by the haunting pain she sees in Stefan.  Women are suckers for that haunted soul shtick.  And so a now calm Elena joins Stefan in his thrashed bedroom as he ruefully tells her the story of how he became a vampire.

Without going into too much detail here is the breakdown:  Katherine greedily decided that she wanted both of the brothers for all time and secretly visited them both to feed them her blood.  She gives them both rings to protect them from the sunlight and then acts like a spoiled child when neither brother will suffer the indignation of sharing her.  In a fit Katherine runs away and the next time the Salvatore brothers see her she is a pile of ash beside her discarded ring and a note claiming she hopes that without her causing them strain that they will come together again.  And, once again, because these boys are written by a woman they decided to blame each other instead of the woman who so clearly is/was playing them.  They fight.  They kill one another.  They rise from the dead.  They are at odds ever since.

We also learn that Stefan is a mourning dove munching pussy and Damon is a bad ass embracing his nature Hunter.  And that Stefan actually feels shame and guilt for killing his brother and causing him to become the monster that he is.  Frankly, if I hear any more of this “I’m damned” crap I am going to have to start writing fanfics in which Stefan gets the death he not-so-secretly wishes for.

After the the long flashback and Stefan’s pity fest he goes on to tell Elena that he is just as bad as his brother and relates how he thinks he is really responsible for the various attacks and killings.  Elena then has to spell out for Stefan what we all have suspected from the beginning.  That Damon is in town and the one responsible for the escalation in the attacks.  And that he is simply toying with Stefan.

If I were Damon I would torment Stefan every century or so just because he’s annoying.  Forget about the simple pleasure that siblings derive from such things anyways.

When Stefan begins to hope against hope that he is a shade less damned than he had previously thought, Elena surprises the dimwitted reader by abandoning all sensible thought and practically forcing her blood on Stefan.

Remind me if I ever have the great pleasure of actually becoming a vampire to pretend to be remorseful and struggle against my nature.  Apparently girl’s drop their panties and bare their necks for you when you do so.  Of course, it’s much easier to just take what you want.  But sometimes the Hunt is a game.

When Stefan and Elena share each other’s blood they experience the blood-lovegasm.  Much like the lovegasm, but slightly less chaste and a bit more psychic.  And if you are wondering if she will now become a vampire too then I’ll just have to clarify that in The Vampire Diaries universe one must fist consume a somewhat sizeable amount of a vampire’s blood first.  And then while the blood is still in your system you have to die.  Dying is very important.  I think that if Elena died now she would just die.  Here’s hoping.

When Elena returns home Stefan sets out to find his brother and confront him.  Every phrase out of Damon’s mouth raises sarcasm to the level of art. Every Syllable from Stefan seems petulant.  History repeats himself and the two boys declare that they both will possess the same woman.  And when neither backs down the two brothers again fight.  And by “fight” I mean it is Stefan’s turn to go down like a shaken baby… with his throat ripped out.  Talk about insult to injury.  That’s like when my old Lab-Rottweiler mix hiked his leg on the neighbor’s yappy dog.  I laughed both times.

The scene ends with Stefan barely walking out of the cemetery under his own power, but still an epic loser.  He is swiftly attacked again and brought down.  He loses consciousness.  I prayed that something truly bad happened to him before I had to experience him express his remorse over something new.  Unless that something new was falling in love with Elena.

The final chapter of this book doesn’t wrap up as fast as it should, though I think it’s shorter than most of the other chapters.  I think I’m just projecting my desire to have this book over with though.

Elena is basking in the internal glow of her love for Stefan and feeling the after effects of the blood-lovegasm.  She sleeps in late and experiences something like floating and pleasant lethargy.  Much like how I wake every day.  I feel cheated in that I didn’t get to swap bodily fluid with a sexy vital vampire the night before waking like this.  But then again, neither did Elena.  She only had Stefan.

When Elena goes to school she learns that Stefan has disappeared.  His car was found abandoned and everyone thinks he has skipped town because he is guilty.  This enrages Elena who actually does something I empathize with.  She has a passionate outburst and storms out of the school into the crazy blustery weather to go confront Damon. This was the one and only time during this book that I said, “Fuck yeah, Elena.”  and then it ended.

AND THEN IT ENDED.  That’s it, kiddles.  Book one of the Vampire Diaries, The Awakening is finally finished.  Unfortunately, I’ve committed to read at least the next couple books.

Basically, what I experienced was not the worst thing I’ve ever read.  the Vampire Diaries – the Awakening is well written and a nice little book for the Young Adult genre.  That’s about as glowing as this review is going to get.

The main protagonist of the series is a stunningly beautiful blond who is the most popular girl at her high school.  She’s been orphaned, but I really didn’t see this as supporting or adding any depth at all to the character.  Rather, I think it was a device to make her somehow less hated as I could imagine this book being written exactly the same with her parents still being alive.  Her love interest is a tortured vampire with family issues.

I couldn’t imagine rooting for either of the two aforementioned characters when they were first introduced.  And by the end of the book I still felt the same way.  And while my hatred for the main character, Elena, did lessen as I continued to read.  I imagine the lessening was like how you get used to a headache over time even though it doesn’t hurt less.

This book throws around several dangerous unmeetable ideas about a kind of cosmically ordained love.  Dangerous in the sense that the young audience that this book is targeted toward simply doesn’t know any better.  Not that I care.

In the end when Elena storms off to a confrontation with her lover’s older brother I began to imagine that in the same situation I would be storming to the self assured elder Salvatore brother out of desire instead of rage.

I’m sure Elena will continue to aggravate me in the following books.

I would not recommend this book to anyone except perhaps as a casual read that you will not invest yourself in.  Good fluff to get kids reading.  Not too gory and not sexually explicit.  In fact, I think this blog is less suited to young readers than this book.

I need to clean my palette with something good now.