Untamed by P.C. and Kristin Cast

***and a 1/2 out of ****

        Now, the real action starts to happen in Untamed. The fourth installment in the House of Night, it introduces more new ideas, and now you start to understand why things happen in Marked, Betrayed, and Chosen. It all leads to one big explosion of a plot, and that explosion starts in Untamed.

        So, we resume to Zoey's friendless (that includes boyfriends for Zoey) life. For some weird reason, Stevie Rae, Zoey's best vampyre friend, has turned into a new kind of vampyre with red markings instead of blue, and Aphrodite, Zoey's enemy-turned-friend, has turned into a new kind of human, who has lost her mark but still has supernatural powers. When humans start killing adult vampyres, Neferet, the high priestess (otherwise known as a principal of a vampyre school), declares war on humans. Zoey and Neferet have an enemy thing going on, so Zoey knows the war can't be good. Neferet has turned her back on their goddess Nyx, and started listening to an ancient evil spirit to help aid her in the war. Now nobody will believe Zoey with her suspicions, because that was all part of Neferet's evil plan.

        I liked Untamed better than the first 3 books, because it introduced more new and orginal ideas. Huh, Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer is the 4th book in the series, and it's also one of my faves. I guess I got a thing for 4th books in vampire series (haha). The vampire thing is getting old, but Untamed mixed Cherokee tradition with vampires, resulting in a really cool plot.



Chosen by P.C. and Kristin Cast

        ***out of ****

        Chosen, the third book following Betrayed in the series, was a scarier, and even more suspenseful book. Nice job Casts!

        The book starts off with Zoey's birthday,where she shuts the door on her friends, and shuts her mom out of her life. Zoey's boyfriend problems escalate even more, where she ends up with three boyfriends. Heath, the human ex-boyfriend (or the blood-filled human), Erik, the perfect vampyre boyfriend, and Loren, the teacher who is OFF-LIMITS. She can only choose one, and the other two aren't going to take it well. And when her friends find out that Zoey has been keeping important information from them, they turn their backs on her completely.


        I'd give Chosen the same rating I gave Betrayed, ***out of ****, because it was very suspenseful; the ending a cliffhanger. Like Betrayed, it played with your heartstrings and tapped inside a teenager's life. Do I recommend Chosen? Not really, but I kind of have to, because the House of Night series in pretty good overall.  

Betrayed by P.C. and Kristin Cast

*** out of ****

        The second book of the House of Night Series has a little more originality. It plays with death, and entwines itself into something darker and more Gothic.

        In this book, Zoey has found herself tangled in the old multiple boyfriend web. So she does what any girl would do. Dump one of them. But her ex-boyfriend Heath goes missing like 2 other football players that have died, so Zoey must set out to find him, surprisingly with the help of the supposed antagonist, Aphrodite (hmm, raising some eyebrows, anyone?). The book introduces a new kind of creature, that has never been talked about before, and introduced new villains as well.

        The second book showed a fair amount of improvement from the first, mainly because this plot was different and didn't put me to sleep. It was definitely a page-turner. Betrayed really played with the teenager's life, so you can connect and relate, something that is hard for an author to do sometimes.

Marked by P.C and Kristin Cast

    **1/2 out of ****

        Ahh, another book about vampires. Today, it seems like the vampire thing is really, really overdone. But Marked is interesting.


        In the book, Zoey, the protagonist of the story, lives in a world similar to ours today, but vampyres live among them. Wow, every teenage girl's dream (haha). Vampyres are considered freaks by humans, where they are abnormal, they don't belong, and are outcasts. So it doesn't get better for Zoey when she is marked as a vampyre. Her mother and step-father don't approve, so Zoey turns to her beloved Cherokee grandmother. All fledgling vampyres are sent to a House of Night, where they train them to make it through the "Change" into an adult vampyre. Along the way, Zoey faces abnormal problems like special, supernatural powers, and normal problems like the classic mean girl.

        So it's a **1/2 stars out of ****. The Casts' style of writing was very good, but the plot wasn't that interesting. It's the average story, the heroine takes down the mean girl, gets the her boyfriend, and becomes popular. I do recommend this book, however, because Marked is the first book in the House of Night Series, and the following books in the series are more interesting and different.

Kobo eReader

        Reading today isn't what it used to be back then. Remember the smell of the paper pages of a good old book? Remember the anticipation of flipping the page to find out what happens next? Well, I wouldn't expect you to remember that anyway, with the new Kobo eReader. The Kobo eReader is, in a nutshell, a giant iPod for books. It resembles a giant iPod, even having an iTunes like program to install on your computer to buy books, like how you buy songs on iTunes. However, the creator of the eReader is not Apple.

        Yet, instead of flopping like an iPod-like device should, it's pretty useful. It's ideal to use outside, with a low-glare screen so its shine doesn't blind you when you step out into the sunlight. It's a good size, and easy and lightweight. I have one myself, and I can bring it anywhere when I want to read. The eReader has a nice, sleek and pretty design, with a display button that can change the size and font of the content. It's easy to find what book you want to read, and it even saves the page you were last on, so when you go back to the book, you go directly back to the page you were last on. It has a huge memory, so it can store up to 1000 books, in one electronic book.

        On the other hand, there are cons of an electronic book. I kind of miss the paper pages of a book, and the feel of them in between my fingers. Turning the page of the eReader may only take 2 seconds, but it's way too long to flip a page. Not that I blame it, but sometimes it takes a long time to load, and people get impatient waiting to find out what happens next in a very suspenseful book.

         So, is it good, or bad? For me, it's more of a innovative device than it is a waste of money. The pros outweigh the cons. So my advice? If you read a lot outside and go out and about to read, I recommend the Kobo eReader.