Reading Rants! Out of the Ordinary Teen Booklists!

Somewhere in the deep woods of seventeenth-century Eastern Europe, Peter and his father Tomas, woodcutters by trade, settle down on the outskirts of a tiny village called Chust. Peter is grateful to finally have a place to call home, as most of his short life he has traveled from town to town with his alcoholic and silent father, who never seems to want to stay in one place for too long and refuses to give an explanation why. But as fall turns into winter, Chust is gripped with terror as bodies begin to litter the snowy landscape, bodies of friends and neighbors that have been horribly mutilated. Soon the suspicious villagers are whispering that maybe the murderers are the woodcutter and his son. After all, they are new to the village, and the killings didn’t start until after they arrived. Peter is frightened, but his father is strangely unmoved, calling the villagers superstitious fools. Does Tomas know more than he’s telling about the brutal murders? What followed Peter and his father to the remote village? And can it be stopped from fulfilling its bloody destiny? Peter believes the answers lies in the large, weather-beaten box that Tomas refuses to allow him to open–a box long enough to hold a sword…Brit author Marcus Sedgwick manages to write an entire terrifying historical novel about the mythological European origins of the blood sucking undead without once using the “V” word. His fascinating story is full of interesting tidbits of forgotten folklore, like the Nunta Mortului, or The Wedding of the Dead. If a young unmarried man dies in his prime, his corpse is “married” to the oldest village girl, who must live in isolation for forty days as she “mourns” him and is considered a widow forever after. A deliciously horrible ritual that I can only guess Sedgwick uncovered in his research of the oldest vampire legends of eastern Europe. But even if folklore isn’t your thing, how can you resist one of the best opening lines ever? “When he fell for the fifth time, when his face plunged into the deep snow, when his hands burnt from the cold but he didn’t care…the woodcutter knew he was going to die.” Can you say, “BRRRRRRRR!” times a thousand? This book screams to read, in more ways than one!

An Open Letter to Stephenie Meyer:

Dear Ms. Meyer,
In all the years that I have been writing Reading Rants, I have never received as much email about a title as I have about your debut novel, Twilight. Your story of star-crossed lovers, one human, one vampire, has been so embraced by teen readers everywhere, that they have let me know, in no uncertain terms, how extremely remiss I am in not having posted a review of Twilight on Reading Rants. So here it is, for those of you vampire lovers who haven’t already devoured it (and the voluminous sequels, New Moon, Eclipse, & Breaking Dawn).

Bella Swan loves the sun, but she loves her dad more, so she agrees to come live with him in his perpetually rainy abode in Washington State. There, she meets gorgeous, brooding Edward Cullen, for whom the rainy climate is perfect. You see, Edward and his family are all vampires and tend to turn translucent in sunlight (as opposed to shrivel into smoldering ash), which can be difficult to explain, hence his frequent absences from school when the weather’s fine. Luckily for Bella, who has fallen head over heels for the stunning bloodsucker, Edward and his clan only hunt animals, not people. But the teen lovers are forced to keep their ardent kisses in check, because as Edward’s Bella-lust begins to rise, so does his bloodlust, and the chances that Bella will suffer more than just your run-of-the-mill hickey. The two manage to balance their unusual relationship until a roving band of real bloodsuckers invades Edward’s family’s territory and threaten Bella. Can Edward overcome his natural desires to save Bella? Or will the new vampires cause him to cross over to the dark side? Lushly written and hauntingly atmospheric, you’ll want to follow up this read with Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, and The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause.

What if all the movers and shakers of the world, the billionaire power-brokers, the elite country-clubbers, the crème de la crème of high society – what if all those old school blue bloods were REALLY cold-blooded vampires? Reincarnated over and over and always passing down the power, these powerful Blue Bloods maintain their secret identities by keeping their human “familiars” alive and well by feeding off of them in shifts and perpetrating silly myths about garlic and crosses to keep humans in the dark about their existence. But now their way of life is being threatened by the Silver Bloods, an insane group of bloodsuckers who feed on other vampires instead of humans. Can the Blue Bloods be saved? Or will their secret be exposed and cause a Blue Blood/Silver Blood war that can only end in death and destruction for human society? De la Cruz’s imaginative take on the privileged upper crust, though a little convoluted, is nevertheless great fodder for the imagination. So THAT’s why those rich little debutantes never gain weight – they’re UNDEAD! Fans of vampire fiction will drink this one right down, along with it’s lip-smacking sequel, Masquerade.