Vampire World by Rich Douglas

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

–I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review-

I remember being told by someone, much younger than me once that they didn’t read young adult fiction because a lot of it treated young adults like they are idiots. While this book doesn’t necessarily do that it is certainly something else, and definitely not my cup of tea.

The main character was so irritating in the beginning I almost put the book down and refused to pick it back up again. She, in the beginning of the novel is vapid and self centred, two traits I don’t appreciate in a protagonist even though I’m definitely one of them myself.

The world that we are tossed into, with only little explanation is confusing and some of the character names simply made me cringe. Vampire World felt like a parody of vampire novels at times, as opposed to an actual vampire novel which I’m not sure was the intent of the author. It was however what I started thinking of parts of the book as and that’s when they were able to take a little more of a humorist twist.

Some of the characters are typical of the setting, the jock becomes a vampire, vicious and twisted and wanting what he can’t have. The mentor is now an adopted father, rather horrendously named FreeCut, but is one of the few likeable characters in the book and the concerned boyfriend, ne’er do well is now basically the same as in many other teen novels with the added bonus of fangs.

The description of fashion in the novel was awful, but in a very intentional “look how ridiculous the people in this world are” kind of way which makes me wonder if the author intent was to have Vampire World represent the worst part of our world or if I am reading too much into it.

The beginning of the book is a typical horror movie/book genre scenario, the big strong boyfriend going out there to protect his girl and getting killed for it.

Some of the slang was just bad, but in the same way it reminded me of my younger cousins and some of the terms they use in their vocabulary when I’ve spoken to them so that wasn’t too far off.

There were a couple things I took issue with and a lot of it had to do with being shown things but not seeing them in my imagination. Also, sometimes the language was a little bit too simplistic.

That’s not to say that I think there will be people who would not enjoy this book, because I’m certain there are. The world build is pretty in depth, even with a sport created to keep things a little bit tense and there is an edge of mystery involved I just believe there could have been some improvement.

Bad Descriptive Moments:

“I stepped groggily out of my bed and looked around the strange room. It was a huge dormitory with at least fifty other beds, all of them containing pale looking kids and teens. Not only couldn’t I remember who I was, I also felt very odd.”

“My bed was basically a flat rock with another rock on top of it as a pillow.”

“The smell of blood was so strong, I felt like a heart surgeon.”

It should be said as well that most of these examples were from the beginning of the novel, and not the end by which the pace, description and writing seemed to pick up.

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