JESSICA’S GUIDE TO DATING ON THE DARK SIDE By Beth Fantaskey. Camberwell:Penguin, 2010

Jessica Packwood knows she was adopted as a baby by the Packwoods, who were in Romania at the time, studying a local culture. She has grown up in the US and attended a normal high school with the standard complement of bullies, bitchy cheerleaders and nice farm boys.

When gorgeous Romanian exchange student Lucius Vladescu informs her that she’s a vampire princess and his destined bride, their union needed to prevent a vampire clan war, she reacts as you’d expect – no way! But Lucius isn’t that easily deterred. And he has a useful gift for her: Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire’s Guide To Dating, Health and Emotions. Of course, there are a couple of things to distract him, such as the above-mentioned bitchy but attractive cheerleader, and his success on the school basketball team…

This is the latest teen vampire romance. The ending is predictable (isn’t it always?), but kids like predictable, so fair enough.

I always wonder, when reading these novels, what would happen if the male vampire was pimply, fat and picked his nose. I’d really love to know why these vampires always seem to be aristocrats (a bit like Tolkien Elves, really), why the heroine is always vital to the survival of the vampire world. (Of course, I did read some years ago that folklore vampires tend to be aristocrats because aristocrats in general are bloodsuckers…)

But then, I’m just a cynical adult who has read far too many of these books since they became popular. And right now, this is what teenage girls want to read. At least this one has a sense of humour. There are some very funny scenes in it, including several letters home from Lucius to his Uncle Vasile about the weirdness of American culture, how you can’t get decent food (apart from pizza, he likes that) or clothes, how they decorate grubby bits of forest in their homes at Christmas and how his betrothed is attracted to a peasant!

The book is well-written and will, among other things, appeal to reluctant readers who will appreciate the shortness of the chapters.

Despite my cynical-adult feelings, I thought it was fun and I know that teenage girls will enjoy it too.

The Last Days - review

Although this book is new in Australia, where the author spends part of every year, it has appeared in the US already, in 2006. I thought it well worth commenting on. Here's my review.

THE LAST DAYS By Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is a prolific - and versatile - writer for teens. His characters are believable teenagers in situations that are often bizarre. His novels begin with lines that pull the reader in. I won’t quote the opening of this one, but it’s no exception.

This novel is a sequel to Peeps. The main characters are new, but it’s set in the same universe and the protagonists from the previous book appear towards the end. While you can more or less pick up what’s going on in this one without having read Peeps, it’s probably a good idea to have read that novel first. It saves time and means you can pick up clues that the novel’s characters can’t.

In Peeps, we met Cal, a nice young man from Texas who had lost his virginity to a woman he met in a New York bar one night. He discovered, soon afterwards, that he’d caught something a lot nastier than a venereal disease - and he’d spread it. Joining a mysterious organisation called the Night Watch, he tried to make things right.

Vampirism, in Westerfeld’s universe, is not about being undead, but about being infected by a parasite. Vampires don’t need to bite you to make you one of them, though they might eat you if they think you’re pretty enough. A kiss will do it, or even a cat breathing on you while you sleep. If you’re lucky, like Cal, the hero of Peeps, you might be a carrier, rather than a victim. If you’re not lucky, you find yourself hating things you used to love, running away from it all to live in holes and tunnels, with rats for company and possibly having a taste for human flesh. It’s controllable; the vampire members of the Night Watch, known as angels, go “vampire hunting” with the aim of catching and treating other victims. Vampires are always hungry and usually horny, because the parasite needs feeding and wants to spread. In exchange, the vampire gets unusual speed and strength and centuries of life, just like the traditional kind. And they’re here for a reason. They’re the only ones strong enough to fight something much worse...

In The Last Days, five teenagers form a rock band in a New York which is being gradually abandoned. Parts of the city are overflowing with rubbish and rats, because the rubbish collectors will no longer go there. The lead singer is a vampire girl whose parents have tried to keep her illness under control. The drummer is a girl with some psychic abilities. There are two boys and a rich girl who doesn’t understand, yet, why all her friends from music school are leaving the city.

As they come to realise the truth, they also find that their music has the power to help save the world - at huge risk to themselves.

This is one helluva rip-roaring thriller. It’s also closer to SF than horror. Westerfeld takes a lot of trouble to explain how it might work, and very convincing it is, too.

Well worth a read.