Sakura of DOOM

(consists of The Initiation, The Captive, and The Power)

For some reason, I never read these when I was in high school going through my L.J. Smith stage, so you get my first impressions now!

Cassie is a supposedly shy and dreamy California girl who moves to the spooky New England town of New Salem so that her mother can take care of her grandmother. Her high school is run by a mysterious Club, and Cassie soon finds out that it's a coven of witches. However, she's soon entangled in coven politics. She's in love with the coven leader Diana's boyfriend Adam, whom she met previously, but she idolizes Diana and doesn't want to hurt her. Bad witch Faye is also taking advantage of this to blackmail her. And to top everything off, something or someone is killing off people in New Salem, and it might have to do with the crystal skull (!!) the coven has unearthed.

I say "supposedly" about "shy and dreamy" because in actuality, Cassie has zero personality of which to speak. You can tell because L.J. Smith has various other people describing her for us!

Back home, Clover had said once that Cassie was like a unicorn herself: blue eyed, shy, and different from everyone else.

Then we have a fellow coven member telling us how gorgeous Cassie was at the homecoming dance:

Don't be silly. It's you. You're a perfect little—gazelle. No, a little white unicorn, one of a kind. I think even Adam has noticed.

And even her rivals talk about how gorgeous she is! Conveniently, Cassie is positioned to overhear them.

She looks ordinary at first, maybe, but there are all sorts of colors in her hair; it changes depending on the light. [...] And she's got eyes to kill for [...] Not the color, so much—they're sort of grayish blue—but they're so big and sincere it's disgustinig. They always look like they're full of tears just ready to spill. Drives the guys crazy.

A unicorn, people! She is a shy, dreamy, TOTALLY UNIQUE UNICORN!

We get similar unsubtlety when it comes to other people's hair and eye descriptions, from Adam's red hair that's really got shades of every color imaginable to Diana's hair, which is apparently a combination of moonlight and sunlight. I mistakenly read the latter as "night and day" at first and pictured black hair streaked with white, which really would have been way more interesting.

However, what makes these books attractive even now is the focus on female homosocial (and barely subtextually homosexual) relationships. It's not only Cassie's relationship with the two rival head witches, Diana and Faye, but also her growing friendship with the other female witches in the coven and the shifting dynamics among all the female witches. There are five male witches as well, but the only ones who really stand out are chivalrous Adam and mysterious bad boy Nick ("He wasn't an iguana"). Even though most of the women are only briefly sketched out with fairly stereotypical traits—wise Melanie, nature-loving Laurel, sexpot Suzan, motorcycle-riding Deborah—some of them grow into more three-dimensional characters, particularly Deborah and Suzan.

I also enjoyed Faye in the end, although L.J. Smith very unsubtly characterizes her as wild, sexual, and on the dark side because... she has black hair! And wears black and red! You can also tell Diana is the source of all things good because she's blonde (or has hair the color of sunlight and moonlight, which I think maps to blonde) and wears white. Still, Smith tries not to demonize Faye. It doesn't always work, but she goes farther with it than I thought she would, and the resolution with Faye, Diana and Cassie pleasantly surprised me.

The heterosexual romance between Adam and Cassie is so boring. SO BORING. This is what happens when you take two characters who have no personality of which to speak and them put them together!

( Spoilers have undescribable green eyes! )

In conclusion: vampire kittens!

Links:
- rachelmanija's review
- coffeeandink's review

Since I'm back in Taiwan, I took the opportunity to reread old LJ Smith books lying around. Sadly, I cannot seem to find Dark Visions 1 and 2, or any more Night World ones. Why did my sister and I not buy more way back when?

For those of you who don't know, LJ Smith was a fairly prolific YA horror/romance writer, along the lines of Christopher Pike and RL Stine, only with much more romance. My sister, my cousin, and I used to read her like crazy in bookstores during summer vacations in the US. Her books are probably best read as a teenager, but on rereading, either my fondness for them remains blinding, or they actually hold up fairly well.

Daughters of Darkness and Huntress are part of the Night World series, in which vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, and witches exist in a sort of underground society. There are only two rules to the Night World: don't tell humans about it, and never fall in love with a human. Unsurprisingly, most of these books are about the latter. The first few books are loosely connected and have recurring characters, though the hero and heroine of each book changes. The ones beginning with Huntress have an arc about an upcoming apocalypse that is still not finished, argh. But the good news is that Smith seems to be putting out the final book (only ten years late!).

Also, there are soulmates! Of course! As signaled by pink sparks and telepathy when they touch!

Daughters of Darkness is my favorite of the NW books. It's about three gorgeous vampire sisters, Rowan, Kestrel, and Jade, who decide to move in with their Aunt Opal in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for them, their evil brother Ash is trying to bring them back into the fold, and even worse, Jade falls for next-door-neighbor Mark. Worst of all, Mark's sister Mary-Lynette thinks something's up when she spies the three burying a suspicious object in the backyard.

I was particularly amused by the many descriptions of the three vampire sisters and how they are all different-looking but gorgeous nonetheless. And by Ash's multicolored eyes! On the other hand, he quotes Jane Austen and my fifteen-year-old self is still completely in love with him.

I think DoD works best for me of all the NW books because under all the paranormal trappings and soulmate bits, it's a comedy. I love all the bits about the sisters trying to figure out life outside their Night World island, and Mary-Lynette and Ash never cease to amuse me. Also, I remain fond of how the book deals with the issue of soulmates and romantic relationships, especially the acknowledgment that the latter can be work and that the former isn't a guarantee of a happy ending.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review

Huntress is my second favorite NW books and has my favorite heroine, Jez. Jez used to be the leader of a renegade group of teenage Night Worlders, but after she discovered she was half-human, half-vampire, she abandoned them to join the vampire hunters. Unfortunately, now that an apocalypse seems to be upcoming, she's got to rejoin her old gang.

This has got an awesome, fighty girl with flame-red hair and dazzling silver-blue eyes; a tough guy who is actually a giant lump of pudding underneath (honestly, him as a threat to Jez is the least believable thing ever) (he has black hair and silver-green eyes. I know you were all dying to know); millennial apocalypses; prophecies in verse; calling people back from the brink of death with the power of True Love (that is SO not a spoiler); and True Love as expressed through fighting with big sticks. It is AWESOME.

I am so looking forward to buying all these and rereading them when the reissues hit the stores.