The Lazy Reader’s Guide: December 14 – December 18, 2015

It’s the last lazy reader’s guide of 2015!

House of Night: Untamed

Here’s where we’re ending the year with House of Night. We’ll pick this up again when we come back to the blog on January 4th, so hopefully you can remember all the… intricate narrative arcs. Like Zoey talking to Stark, and Stark immediately dying.

• The Twins have a Bourne movie marathon with their romantic interests. In what is maybe the best thing to ever happen in House of Night, we don’t actually have to experience it.
• Damien explicitly points out that the new kid Stark has the same name as James Dean’s character from Rebel Without A Cause. Subtlety was never House of Night‘s strong suit.
• Damien walks Zoey to the stables, and hums a song from Rent while leaving. Subtlety was never House of Night‘s strong suit.
• Zoey has a heart-to-heart with Stark about how difficult it is to be so blessed by the goddess. Stark reveals that he has magic power to “always hit his target”, but his “target” isn’t what he’s aiming at, but what he wants to hit. Or just whatever the Casts think will be ironic or something.
• Stark immediately starts dying. Just like that. Possibly because he realized he was in a House of Night novel and wanted out. Zoey makes out with him while he’s dying.

Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined

We’re almost done! Case in point: Beau has just turned into a vampire. Unlike Bella. He is already absurdly good at it, because Beau/Bella is vaguely special.

• The Cullens find Beau and I guess save him from the tracker vampire, whose demise is neither explained or even hinted at.
• They realize that Beau has been bitten, but unlike the situation was for Bella in Twilight, he’s already too far gone, and has to either die or become a vampire. He immediately chooses becoming a vampire, because I guess when you’re a teenager and in teenager love, immortality totally sounds like a good call.
• While he’s transforming Edythe infodumps a ton of backstory about the secret society and history of vampires, which has absolutely nothing to do with Life and Death and is totally worth reading right as it’s about to end.
• Beau wakes up in his new, smokin’ hot vampire bod. He and Edythe go hunting and talk about their feelings, which are unchanged from the rest of the book, and – if I’m understanding the science of vampire non-aging correctly – will remain unchanged forever.

Come back next week for the epilogue! As a reminder, we’re breaking from our regular schedule, and these will be up on Monday and Tuesday before we take off for the holidays. See you next week, then see you in the new year!