Customer Reviews

The Vampire's Promise

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

by Blythe Robbins

Usually a master of suspense, Caroline B. Cooney is perhaps most famous for her book, The Face on the Milk Carton, which she wrote back in the mid 90s (and I LOVED). Around that same period, she wrote three separate vampire novels (Deadly Offer, Evil Returns, and Fatal Bargain) that are now available in one volume as The Vampire's Promise. Unfortunately, these vampire novels are anything but thrilling and are a big disappointment.

To be fair, these vampire stories were written before the huge vampire craze hit the country. We're talking pre-Twilight, pre-Vampire Diaries, pre-"True Blood" days. The vampires in this novel are not flashy, or sexy, or fun to read about. They have no romantic relationships with the female characters. Actually, they don't really even have bodies.

No, these vampires are presented as true evil, with no lighter shades of gray that hint at underlying worthy human traits. There is nothing human about these vampires. In fact, there's not even anything vampire-ish about these vampires. They are more like genies that (at least in the first two stories) grant human wishes in return for human flesh. If this sounds confusing, that's because it often is in the story.

In the first tale, Deadly Offer, Althea dreams of being popular. In a fit of curiosity, she opens the shutters of the tower to her family's old mansion (although her family never appears in the story), and somehow this act awakens a vampire. He promises her all the popularity she can dream of if she brings him his victims. Why he doesn't just drink her blood is not exactly clear; it has something to do with not being able to leave the house and needing her to continuously feed him. Of course, Althea does what he asks and finds the popularity she has dreamed about.

In Evil Returns, Althea has moved away from the house and Devnee has moved in. And guess what? Devnee has dreams too, of being beautiful! Her bedroom is in the haunted tower and so of course she meets the vampire. Same plot structure ensues: he promises her beauty and more (yup, she becomes smart too!) in exchange for feeding the vampire (which we never see).

Finally, in Fatal Bargain, the big haunted mansion is empty and about to be demolished for a mall. So a group of six teenagers decide to go there and party, and surprise! They awaken the vampire. He doesn't promise them any wishes, however, he just tells them that they must decide which one of them can live. However, from this point forward, the story includes so many sub-plots and secondary characters (including a second vampire, who is [I think] the one from the previous two stories) that it's just a bit ridiculous.

One of the big problems with all of the stories is that there's no character development. The first two stories would have been far more interesting if I knew why Althea and Devnee were so focused on their wishes. Instead, they just seem rather shallow and uninteresting; so much so, that I started to wish that one of them would secretly turn out to be a sociopath who would become a lifelong partner of the vampire to get whatever she wanted in the world.

Sadly, that was not the case. All the characters manage to overcome the vampire in truly uninspiring endings. Separately, these stories are undeveloped; as a single novel, they seem thrown together last-minute. These aren't stories for people who love vampires, or for people who love suspense, or even for people who love to read. Maybe they're stories for evil vampire-genies; but, having never met one, I guess we'll never know.

Synopsis: Six teenagers decide to party at "The Mall House", a strange dark mansion with broken shutters. The group comprises of:

- Randy, the wannabe of the group who everyone likes only for his fancy gadgets and equipment, who also decides to have the party at the Mall House to scare the girls;
- Bobby - the jock of the group who feels he can physically overcome anything
- Zach - Bobby's friend who is the one class act of the group
- Roxanne - one of Bobby's girlfriends who wants to achieve everything she sets her mind to
- Sherree - The beautiful self centered girl who is also Bobby's girlfriend
- Lacey - Randy's date, who she really doesn't care for, but she wants to be part of the group and make new friends.

Lacey is the first one who notices the vampire during the party. The Vampire soon appears before everyone and tells them that he possesses the door, and none of them can leave, until they have decided to choose one from their group to be his victim. The group members try various ways of escaping the mansion, but the Vampire can read their thoughts and is always one step ahead. Who will be selected as the vampire's sacrifice?

Review: Initially when I started reading this book, I thought it was going to be great. Having read the previous two books of the Vampire series ("The Cheerleader" and "The Return of the Vampire", or for newer versions, retitled "Deadly Offer" and "The Evil Returns") I had high expectations for this book and thought it would be better than the first two. For one thing, unlike the previous two books which both contained a similar storyline of one particular girl who makes a deal with the devil to become popular, this book focused on a group of teenagers rather than just one person(even though Lacey is somewhat the main character, but it didn't feel that way). Secondly, I thought the storyline would be interesting to see how the characters would fight from choosing each other.

However, these two reasons which made me want to read the story were somewhat destroyed for me as I continued reading the book. In terms of the storyline, I felt that the author went overboard with characters and simply decided to add new ones just to fill pages. We have thrown in to the story, a policewoman who is looking for some action, a car thief who stumbles upon the mansion and decides to steal one of the teenager's cars, Kevin (Lacey's brother) and his friend Mardee (Bobby's sister) who decide to scare their siblings at the party, and Ginny and Jordan, who are searching for Ginny's brother, who is supposedly someone at the party.

Even though the policewoman is supposedly someone who appeared in one of the previous stories (as she remembers going to parties regularly at the mansion when 'someone' she knew from high school lived there), her name (nor the then resident of the house) is not mentioned, which I found really disappointing, because I thought it would have been a good reference to one of the previous stories. Moreover, Cooney really doesn't specify who Ginny's young brother is from the group of teenagers. If she did, then I did not notice it. And then there is the car thief. What his role in the story was, I will never understand. If he is a car thief, then why doesn't he take the car away when Mardee and Kevin see him?

(SPOILERS BELOW)
I think the worst part was when the author decided to add a second vampire into the storyline, even though there is no mention of him in the earlier books of the series. Where this vampire came from or why he decided to appear now, we will never know.

This is not to see that the book was completely bad though. I liked the reference that the author makes to Althea and Devnee (from the previous books) in the beginning of the story. I also liked Mardee's character, as I thought she brought some humor to the story. I also like Lacey's character and reading how the teenagers responded to the vampire's promise.

Overall, I thought the concept of the storyline was really interesting as a climax for the Vampire series, but the execution of the story was overall disappointing compared to the previous two books. Unless you had read other books in the series and you want to read how the series ends, I would avoid reading this one.

Usually, Caroline B. Cooney is enthralling when she tells a story, but throughout the entire book, I was bored, bored, bored. This book is actually three books in one, and all three were equally dull. The same discriptions were used over and over, and the characters were boring and lifeless, and it could hardly hold my interest. I am not one to not finish a book once I start, and that is the only reason I was able to finish. Please, save the money on this one and buy one of her better ones, such as Flight 116 is Down, or The Stranger.

Why oh why can't anyone seem to write a decent vampire book? What a waste of a good genre.

This book was okay, but I wouldn't bother reading it again. Thankfully, it was quite short. The premise of this book is that a vampire traps a group of teens in a haunted house, and forces them to choose which one of them shall be his victim. As a plot, that sounds interesting, doesn't it? A kind of an undead Sophie's Choice. However, I soon found that most of the teenagers were so annoying and superfluous that by fifteen pages into the book I was barracking for the vampire to do away with the lot of them! The teens get slightly less annoying as time goes on, but not enough to make me like them...except for Lacey, who's the only decent character.

Not only were the teens annoying, but the author's writing left a lot to be desired too. I felt like saying to her: enough adjectives already! The author spent too much time saying that things were like other things (i.e. 'pinned to the atmosphere like a Velcro wall-jumper' and other similarly weird similes), and not enough time actually developing the plot. There were some interesting observations on the thoughts and relationships of teenagers, but these were counterbalanced with huge logic gaps, especially in the conclusion. Also, the writing style was pedestrian, with a real 'first novel', rushed feel.

Still, if you're a teen who likes vampire stories, but you don't want them to be scary, then you'll probably like this.

I loved this book it really made you look at the diffrent charicters and how they really thought about the other charicters. They each think it shouldn`t be them. It really gives you a look at everyones dark side, and your dark side as well. Although when the others are bringing out there selfish sides, some are finding the good that they always had, but never showed.

I just wanted to say Caroline B. Cooney has done it again. I love how she describes everything very clearly. I loved all three of the books. I hope this book is republished again, for those who didn't get a chance to read it.

I didn't like this book at all, but the author tricked me a few times. I thought the book would scare me but it didn't so I gave it two star rating. My favorite part was the beginning when stuff started happening.

I read this book because the cover and the description were very interesting, but the only problem was once I got into the book I felt that it let the reader down ,like the vampire being described as a horrific childlike clown and not like a real vampire and that his powers would indeed stretch beyond just a dark path ? what's that about ?

Anyway I kept reading because this book is the kind of book where you turn the pages and go maybe it will get better ,every page thats what my mind said .There were parts where I said to myself ''Oh it's getting good and as soon as it got good the good was over.

I dreaded picking up this book when I felt like braving the dark paths again lol .I am a fairly fast reader and it took forever to finish and its only 486 pages which in reality I thought a book with that type of cover and title would be a lot more gripping than it was .I will strongly go with the quote ''Don't judge a book by its cover.''

I read reviews on this book on Amazon when I bought it just to see what others thought before I read it to give it a fair shot .I thought well maybe people are just getting sick of vampire books and are judging unfairly, they were right though . I hope you form your own opinion and don't jump down my back cause i didn't like it. I will say it was a new approach on viewing vampires. I just wish it was more of a page turner and it just wasn't there for me .

Really poorly written. The stories are not developed well. Don't waste your time if you are looking for a new vampire book to read. Stick with the Twilight Series or Vampire Diaries.

If I weren't compulsive about finishing any book I've started, I would have thrown this one out a long time ago.