We were walking down a narrow hall that curved gently.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?  Do you know why hallways are straight?  It’s because there are rooms on the other side of those walls.  If you have a curved hallway, that means you have curved rooms.  I mean, I guess you could do that if you want.  You could live in a crazy house of crazy curves where none of your furniture fits against the wall.  But why would you?

No, I’m serious.  It possible, but there should be a reason behind it, and I want to know the reason.  Instead, Zoey just tosses this line out like curved hallways are just a thing that happens, and not something someone would do on purpose. 

Every so often flickering gaslights that hung from old-fashioned-looking black iron sconces stuck out of the wall, giving off a soft yellow glow that was, thankfully, really easy on my eyes.

Gas lights are dangerous.  Okay, not the kind of dangerous that means you should only go near them with safety goggles on, but still.  There’s a reason we switched to electric.  If the flame on a gaslight goes out, that doesn’t stop the gas from leaking out and suffocating everyone.  Or exploding.  Depends on the gas.  If you want a soft light, then get low-watt bulbs.

We’re not told when this school was built, or even what it looks like.  Not on a large scale, anyway.  But it’s in Tulsa, OK, which as far as I know does not have ancient dwellings anymore.  There’s no reason to assume this school was built pre-electricity, or that if it was, that it can’t be updated.  So why are there no electric lights?

For the same reason there’s no lightbulbs in Harry Potter: the author just thought it fucking looked cool.  (Yeah, I know that ‘electricity conflicts with magic,’ but they had fucking magic.  Make some magic lightbulbs and keep the open flame away from the 13-year-old boys.  Everyone knows teenagers and fire are a bad combination.)

I am rather sick of the assumption that old shit is better than new shit just by dint of being old.  You see it a lot in books that have magic, or really anything that’s supposed to be connected to the arcane.  Sure, I can understand that people might want to hold to a different set of values, or that something about their arcane thing might make electricity impossible.  But there’s no sense of progress in these stories.  People just stop developing at X number of years ago, rather than develop within their own system.  They end up feeling like they’re not really people, they’re just set pieces to a period-inaccurate play.  Societies are supposed to grow and change over time, and if they grow differently than ours did, that’s okay.  But they should still do something. 

Neferet gives Zoey the cliff notes on the school.

Nyx’s Temple is, of course, open at all hours, but formal rituals are held twice a week right after school.

Dude, this is a cult. 

Are there no religious kids that end up as vampyres?  I know Zoey has no fucks to give about God, because Christians are just bigots that she hates, but what about the other students?  Has there never been anyone coming into this school and going “uh, High Priestess, I’m Jewish.  Can I please not participate in a ‘ritual’ to worship some entity that I’m still not sure is even a real deity?”  What about polytheists like Wiccans, who might have a better time accepting the idea of another goddess, but who might not agree with the idea of worshiping her, or of the method of worship?  Do they just tell everyone to shut up because they’re vampyres now and have to go to Temple?

How is this really any better than if Zoey got sent to Catholic school against her will?  Oh, right, because Christians are bad, but the uber-special vampyres are always right.  Because fuck religious freedom, that’s why.

They come across some big pet cat that usually bites people, but it likes Zoey and cuddles up to her instead.  Because we have to hammer in how special Zoey is.  You know, just in case you missed it the first dozen times.

John, her new husband, doesn’t like cats.”

“I’ve found that the way a person feels about cats—and the way they feel about him or her in return—is usually an excellent gauge by which to measure a person’s character.”

Well, I guess I’m just a terrible person then.  I mean, it’s not like you can dislike cats for any reason other than just being a fundamentally flawed person.

Neferet and Zoey bond over how they both like cats and hate her family.  Yeah, Neferet already hates her family, without hearing anything about them or meeting them or nothing.  Then we find out Neferet has magic powers that involve cats and healing, because all High Priestesses have magic powers.

Oh, and another vampyre power is always knowing the time.  And that’s just one of the powers Zoey will develop as she progresses.  Because not only does Zoey have to be special, but she has to be the specialest of the special, so we have to make sure that the vampyres have a fuck-ton of useless powers as well.

“So, wait. You said that classes start at eight? At night?” Okay, I’m usually not this slow, but some of this was like she was speaking a foreign language to me. I was having a hard time getting it.

Zoey, you are now allergic to sunlight.  The other people allergic to sunlight do all their business when the sun goes down.  Why is this a hard concept for you?

“Oh, God, I’m sorry I—” I broke off, wondering whether it was okay for me to say “God.” Would it offend Neferet, a High Priestess who wore her Goddess Mark so proudly? Hell, would it offend Nyx? Oh, God. What about saying “hell”? It was my favorite cuss word ever.

Neferet is a real person, it’s important not to offend her religious sensibilities.  Everyone else in the world, though?  Fuck ’em.

We don’t get any answer to Zoey’s questions, so we don’t know what vampyre views on God are.  Probably for the best.

the Goddess

It’s like this every time, and it bugs me.  It shouldn’t be capitalized.  If anything has a ‘the’ in front of it, it’s not a proper name.  (Unless ‘the’ is part of the name, like The Sunday Times.)  So it should be either ‘Goddess’ or ‘the goddess.’  I capitalize ‘God’ because that’s a name, or at least as close as we get to a name.  In any other case, no.  Every other thing in this book is capitalized, and it doesn’t need to be.  ‘Tracker,’ ‘Mark,’ ‘the Change.’  Everything.  Stop it already.

Then Zoey and Neferet talk about how Zoey is so fucking special because Nyx tapped her for something special, and there’s just specialness all over the place.

Neferet gets a call on her cell phone.  So they have cell phones, but they couldn’t spring for lightbulbs?  Anyway, she’s got to go back to the infirmary.  She’s got the special healing touch, after all.  Why give that power to your High Priestess?  Why not give it to your Priestess of Healing and Shit?  I mean, realistically, ‘High Priestess’ should be a largely administrative job and she shouldn’t have time for doing other work, so- Oh, who am I kidding?  This book has no idea what people in charge of anything actually do.  It probably thinks that CEOs do nothing but play golf all day, too.  Anyway, Neferet tells Zoey to walk down to the end of the hall and then wait there.

Zoey walks along until she hears a noise.

It was a soft, girly laugh that for some reason made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Oh, no, it’s someone being more girly than the main character!  Everyone knows that if you’re more girly than the main character, you must be evil!

Seriously, it’s like these books thinks that femininity is inherently dirty, and if you have too much of it, that makes you an evil person.  The good characters tend to be just boy-y enough to be real people, but not so much that they bend the laws of nature and be actually as good as a man.

So, Zoey wonders if this giggling voice is Nyx, since it calls Zoey’s name and sort of sounds like Nyx.  Zoey keeps walking, but due to the bad writing, I can’t tell if she’s walking down the hallway where she’s supposed to go or the one with the funny voice.

Then Zoey sees a girl giving some guy a blowjob.  I guess we’ve found our new slut-shaming target for the evening.  Zoey sticks around to watch them.

The guy tells the girl to stop.  I guess she wasn’t really giving him a bj, just about to.  You know, for all the slut-shaming that goes on in YA, we never get to see any actual sex.  Anyway, the guy stops her, so I guess he’s going to turn out to be a good guy.  Good Guys never have sex with the sluts, don’tchaknow.

Her voice was all husky and trying to be sexy, but I could also hear the whine in it. She sounded almost desperate. 

Oh…joy.  This book really just can’t pass up an opportunity to deride a woman, can it?  Not only is she a slut, but she’s a desperate and whiney slut.  Uhg.

Apparently vampyre bjs involve cutting and bloodletting.  You know why fanfiction is great?  Because (most) fanfics will warn you before you stumble across bloodplay.  I mean, it’s a valid kink and common in vampire fandoms, but still.  There’s a difference between sexualized bloodplay and just straight drinking blood. 

And then something truly bizarre happened. I could feel his touch through our eyes. I couldn’t look away from him. The girl in front of him seemed to disappear, and all there was in the hallway was him and me and the sweet, beautiful smell of his blood.

So, yeah, love interest.

Zoey runs away and goes to sit where Neferet told her to.

Of course there are girls who think it’s “cool” to give guys head. Uh, they’re wrong. Those of us with functioning brains know that it is not cool to be used like that.

Did you catch that?  Oral sex is wrong.  It’s just wrong.  Flat out wrong. No way to make it right.  The very act itself is degrading.  There’s no possible way to have oral sex, which your teeth are around a man’s cock, and actually be in power.

Probably because this book thinks that girls can’t enjoy giving head.  It’s the assumption that no girl would give oral sex for their own pleasure, so they must be forced into it by a man, and therefore it’s inherently degrading.  Well, that’s bullshit.  There’s lots of reasons a woman might like giving oral sex.  Off the top of my head, I can think of: 1) the mouth has a fuck-ton of nerve endings, and 2) being in a position of power over your partner can be exhilarating, even if the associated physical sensations aren’t.

Now, it can go the other way, sure.  It can be degrading.  But not because of the act.  It’s because of the way the people treat each other, not the mechanics of the particular sex act.  Anything can become degrading.  Missionary position can become degradi- 

Oh, god, book, please don’t turn into one of those messages that say that all sex is anti-woman, but they’ve got to do it anyway to procreate, they’re just not allowed to enjoy it.  Please don’t.  I’ll have to hurt you.

Back to what’s going on currently, though.  Zoey angsts a bit about how bjs are just so nasty and she’s nasty herself for wanting to lick that guy’s blood.  Then Neferet returns and takes her own the rest of the tour.

So they go outside and we get to see the school building properly.  It looks like a castle.  Because fuck logic, that’s why.  There’s also a lot of vampyres who look cool and pretty, because vampyres are special, and don’t you forget it.  And next to the school is the temple with a statue of Nyx.

Neferet claims the school was built as a monastery for the Christians.  (Okay, she calls them the People of Faith religion, the same term used for John’s group, but come on.  They’re Christian.)  She says it was built in the neo-French-Norman style in the 1920s.  And, while there is a style of architecture known as ‘French Normandy’ that was popularized in America, it was never applied to churches or castles.  It was based off of French farmhouses.  Also, it became popular after WWI.  While it might have been around in the 1920s, it wouldn’t be ‘neo’ at that point, because it would still be in its first blush.  So, this book is stupid, but I just got to spend a long time looking at pretty houses.  Silver lining and all that.

After the building was a monastery, it was a private school, and Zoey spends a moment thinking about how rich kids are all stuck-up idiots who do drugs.  Anyway, the vampyres bought it from the private school and turned it into a new private school.

Turns out all the mature vampyres are Mary Sue levels of hotness.

The most successful actors and actresses in the world were vampyres. They were also dancers and musicians, authors and singers. Vampyres dominated the arts

…and yet you have no idea what vampyres wear or if they all turn emo and goth.  How is this possible?  Do vampyre actors never give interviews?  Are there no more paparazzi in this world?

Was the author just drunk and stoned when she wrote this book, and that’s why nothing makes fucking sense or stays consistent from chapter to chapter?

Then Zoey takes a moment to say stupid shit about Christians again.

Hello—can you say hypocrites?

Yes, I can.  However, I suspect it is missing from your own dictionary, since you seem incapable of realizing it applies to yourself.

Uh, I did notice that, as I had suspected, their uniforms had a lot of basic black in them (you’d think that a group of people so up on the arts would recognize a cliché when one goes walking by in boring Goth black. I’m just saying…).

I want to stab that ‘uh’ in the face.  Also, shut up, basic black is a staple in both uniforms and formal wear.  There’s no reason to think that “black = Goth.”  Gothic fashion has a fuckton more to it than just color.  As you would know if you ever bothered to pull your head out of your ass and actually observe people instead of blindly criticize them.

Hypocrite.

So, all the students have weird designs on their uniforms that I’m sure we’ll find out about later.  Also, they are all looking at Zoey’s Mark of Super Specialness, so she gets to whine about how she’s the center of attention and that makes her life suck.  Because, you know, in Chapter 2 she was whining about how people she’d never see again would avoid her if they saw her mark.  But now not being avoided is just the worst thing ever.

Because fuck staying sober, that’s why.