This is an awful book.

I shall continue my unhappy mood with a scathing review of this ridiculous book - Thirst, by Christopher Pike. Yes, I know it's a teen novel. I read the Christopher Pike catalog in Jr. High and had such fond memories, I thought for sure his jump on the vampire bandwagon would be a nostalgic continuation. My standards are not high - I read the whole Twilight series, fully admitting the writing was atrocious and the storyline absurd, but I was still hooked. I expected this to be slightly better than that, if still a little juvenile.

Not even close.

First, I have to admit: yes, I do read a fair amount of Vampire themed literature. And watch it on TV. And attend a "book club" which may or may not center around the True Blood show on HBO. I'm not some mopey goth child who believes I am a vampire, and in fact I react much the same way as my dog does when someone gets near my neck (leave my wobble alone!). I'm not sure how it happened, but I can admit it: I am entertained by vampires.

I was forced into reading one of the Twilight books by a student, but of course I got hooked and had to finish the series. I find it embarrassing that I got sucked in, and I heartily recognize that the writing was awful, but the story was still amusing. From there I was introduced to True Blood and the Charlain Harris novels, which are much more interesting. But now I'm through all of them, and waiting a year between books leaves some gaps to be filled. When I saw this book on an endcap at Target for $8, I thought I'd give it a try.

Egad, how can you be a WORSE writer than Stephenie Meyer?!?!? Was Pike always this awful? Dang, another reminder of how uncool my pre-teen self was. And while there is actually sex in these books, they're somehow even less hot than the "yet another 700 pages without any f!@#ing" that New Moon was hilariously referred to as. How does that happen?

Vampires should be fun and exciting, yet the heroine in this series comes across as nothing more than an egotistical Barbie doll. She's pretty, good at everything, and...boring. Yawn. Part of the fun of vampire stories is learning the author's choices on what vampires really are in their world - i.e. do they burst into fire in the sun (Angel), or glitter like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper (Twilight)? What do they look like when they "vamp out", do their fangs pop out, eyes change color, what? In the Thirst world vampires are just like people but they're good at everything. Sorta mean girls on steroids. There's no Achilles heel to bring them down to "our" level (silver, garlic, stakes to the heart), and there is no tormented soul struggling with moral decisions, which is really the heart of all vampire stories.

And Thirst actually has TYPOS! Hello, copy editors? Egads. The love story is drab an unbelievable - I know, that sounds weird, I'm willing to suspend disbelief to accept the vampire mythology, but not the love story - but come on writers, you have to at least build in some reason for the attraction! You are WRITERS. You should WRITE. Tug at my heartstrings, paint a picture - this snoozefest just flips a page and decides "Hey, after 5,000 years (and a few chapters) of being a totally unemotional and vacant, this vamp is in love. And that is about the extent of the description of said emotional transaction as well - it's a statement with no feeling created around it.

This book is a trilogy, and I've only made it through the first of the stories, I'm struggling to even waste my time with the second. It would probably be better spent re-reading the Sookie Books.

Did I just spend this much time discussing a bad teen vampire book?

I clearly need to get back to crafting.