For 500 years Lenah Beaudonte has been a vampire. 500 years of seduction, blood and destruction. But she is sickened by her dark powers – and longs to feel the sun on her skin, grass under her bare feet, and share the breath of a human kiss. She wants to be mortal again. But is she really capable of being human, after her long years of darkness? Waking up as a sixteen-year-old girl brings Lenah many things – the life she has missed, taste, touch, love. But a vampire soul is not easily shed. And her coven – the four vampires she led in decadence and thrilling destruction – want their queen back…
Lenah, a former Vampire Queen, is now a teenage human, after 576 years living as a vampire. How can you not be intrigued with this book after reading such a great sentence?
Essentially, this is written like a gothic horror book (think early Anne Rice or Dracula) rather than the more popular romanticized vampire book (like Twilight or Vampire Academy). Vampires are not the good guys here. They’re soulless – well, the vampires in Lenah’s former coven are – and evil. They feel nothing except torment and pain, usually losing their minds after 300 years.
I loved it. I loved that vampires were monsters again and something to be feared. I think young adult readers have forgotten there was once a time when vampires were not the love interests or the good guys, they were the things people ran from. I loved the gothic feel to it. I hope this signals a moving trend away from romanticized vampires.
I also liked Lenah. She’s a mixture of experience from living for so long and an innocent when it comes to culture or anything teenagers are faced with in life and school. Her voice held authority behind it, but there are also times she has to deal with a certain emotion for the first time (the one that comes to mind is humiliation) and she falters for a second. She seemed more human in those moments than the times Rebecca Maizel points it out for the reader.
Also, it’s a good thing I know this is a series. Otherwise, I would hate the ending. I like happy ever afters, but in true gothic horror theme, there wasn’t one. At least, not yet.
And the thing that’s revealed in the sneak peek of Stolen Nights, the follow-up book to Infinite Days, I’d already guessed at, but I’m excited to see what comes of it because the love interest in this book fell a little flat to me.
Stolen Nights will be released June 22, 2011. Infinite Days is already available to read in bookstores and libraries everywhere.