The Drake Chronicles: Bleeding Hearts by Alyxandra Harvey
| The Drake Chronicles: Bleeding Hearts by Alyxandra Harvey | |
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| Category: Teens | |
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Reviewer: Loralei Haylock
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| Summary: A step up for a series that has consistently delivered 'okay, but not great.' Still has slightly unbelievable romance, but with good characters, plenty of action and fast paced narrative that make this an enjoyable, and slightly edgier read. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 304 | Date: October 2011 |
| Publisher: Bloomsbury | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1408814970 | |
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Things in Violet Hill are not looking good at the moment. The small town is practically over run by the vicious Hel-Blar vampires: not the civilised, friendly (and hot) variety that Lucy is used too – these are feral, and attack indiscriminately, humans and vampires alike.
This has done them some favours – the Helios-Ra academy, previously sworn enemy of all things fanged and nocturnal, has united with the Drake Vampires in an uneasy truce to work together to wipe the Hel-Blar out for good. But with the Blood Moon – an ancient meeting of vampires – approaching, and a Hel-Blar leader (something previously unheard of) demanding invitation.
And as if Vampire politics and attacks weren't enough to deal with, Lucy's cousin Christabel has come to stay. Used to the city, Christabel can't understand why Lucy's parents insist on curfews and not leaving the house after nightfall. But when Christabel is kidnapped by the new Hel-Blar leader, she's about to discover exactly how dangerous a small town like Violet Hill can be in the dark.
I've always felt this series was good, but not great. There were lots of interesting things happening, but never really explored in great detail, the grittier stuff brushed over for romance and hot boys. And while Bleeding Hearts has plenty of the latter, it is somewhat darker and edgier than the previous instalments, with further reaching consequences than whether or not the latest teenage girl will get her happily ever after with one of the Drake brothers.
A return to Lucy's perspective is welcome, as she was always one of the better realised characters, and some development in other characters that previously took centre stage, but have since been somewhat ignored, made the book feel fuller. Solange in particular was given some interesting developments, and the cliffhanger ending made me feel, for the first time with this series, like keeping an eye on the release date for the next book.
It falls into the trappings of the previous instalments in some senses – the romance is still based almost entirely on how hot the Drake boys are, and develops far too rapidly to have any real believability, but it's forgivable, as the pace of the story and the action does sort of demand a slightly rushed and compacted narrative to keep the book at an easily digestible size.
My thanks to the publishers for sending a copy.
For more vampires and romance, check out Lili St Crow's Strange Angels series.
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