Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz
Mar. 14th, 2009 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreSchuyler Van Alen is a modern goth emo teen who attends Duchesne, a prestigious, exclusive school for New York’s terminally rich. Naturally, she hates all her snobby classmates and lounges around with her equally disaffected best friend, Oliver. Her opposite number is the bitchy and elite Mimi, who isn’t happy when her twin brother, Jack, the most popular boy in school, starts having an interest in Schuyler. Mimi’s best friend, Bliss, secretly hates everything Mimi stands for, but goes along with it to be in the In crowd, until she falls for bad-boy Dylan, who is also Schuyler and Oliver’s friend.
No, Gossip Girl’s cast didn’t get renamed, I promise.
Virtually every student at Duchesne can list off a few presidents in their background and trace their lineage at least as far back and The Mayflower. There’s careful explanations about how the truly classy rich don’t show off their wealth and endless brand name dropping, exclusive clubs, exclusive fashions, etc. But then a student is found dead and drained of blood, and Schuyler and Bliss start to notice they’re feeling strange and developing strange habits. Like eating raw meat.
Soon, they learn that they are from a long line of vampires who have reincarnated through hundreds of lifetimes, reincarnating as their own descendants, apparently guiding the world as they’ve done so, and that an old enemy is returning to try to wipe them out. In all honesty, the only thing about them that seems vampiric is “We totally drink blood.” It feels a bit…arbitrary. Like de la Cruz tacked the label on her supernatural race because it sells.
There’s some neat worldbuilding here that involves things like reincarnation and angels and demons and angels living as human and supernatural forces guiding humanity and awesome grandmothers and discovering your destiny and ancient enemies and people who aren’t supposed to exist and divided families and the mythic importance of twins and reincarnated twins.
You know, things I kind of squee over.
Unfortunately, the characters and their relationships were pretty stereotypical. The mythology is interesting enough to keep me reading, I just wish that the people in it were more interesting. Though I do appreciate the lack of the angsty, morally upright antihero longing for the pure love of a mortal woman that will redeem him of his sins. I also find it a bit irritating that every single character is from a strict, elite, white European lineage, especially considering how long they’ve been at it, and what part of the world they should have first manifested in, and when. Hint: seems to be Biblical times. I get that the “white European” thing is to explain how they eventually came to come to America on The Mayflower, but every identified past life is from medieval Europe on. What we see doesn’t fit with the implied origins.
Still, there’s all my cool bits, and the interesting mythology to get me to come back.
No, Gossip Girl’s cast didn’t get renamed, I promise.
Virtually every student at Duchesne can list off a few presidents in their background and trace their lineage at least as far back and The Mayflower. There’s careful explanations about how the truly classy rich don’t show off their wealth and endless brand name dropping, exclusive clubs, exclusive fashions, etc. But then a student is found dead and drained of blood, and Schuyler and Bliss start to notice they’re feeling strange and developing strange habits. Like eating raw meat.
Soon, they learn that they are from a long line of vampires who have reincarnated through hundreds of lifetimes, reincarnating as their own descendants, apparently guiding the world as they’ve done so, and that an old enemy is returning to try to wipe them out. In all honesty, the only thing about them that seems vampiric is “We totally drink blood.” It feels a bit…arbitrary. Like de la Cruz tacked the label on her supernatural race because it sells.
There’s some neat worldbuilding here that involves things like reincarnation and angels and demons and angels living as human and supernatural forces guiding humanity and awesome grandmothers and discovering your destiny and ancient enemies and people who aren’t supposed to exist and divided families and the mythic importance of twins and reincarnated twins.
You know, things I kind of squee over.
Unfortunately, the characters and their relationships were pretty stereotypical. The mythology is interesting enough to keep me reading, I just wish that the people in it were more interesting. Though I do appreciate the lack of the angsty, morally upright antihero longing for the pure love of a mortal woman that will redeem him of his sins. I also find it a bit irritating that every single character is from a strict, elite, white European lineage, especially considering how long they’ve been at it, and what part of the world they should have first manifested in, and when. Hint: seems to be Biblical times. I get that the “white European” thing is to explain how they eventually came to come to America on The Mayflower, but every identified past life is from medieval Europe on. What we see doesn’t fit with the implied origins.
Still, there’s all my cool bits, and the interesting mythology to get me to come back.
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Date: 2009-03-14 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-03-15 12:01 am (UTC)