Thursday 19 July 2012

Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel


Lenah Beaudonte is not a typical sixteen-year-old girl; for a start, she used to be a vampire, notorious for being the most dangerous of her kind. Secondly, she was made a vampire about five hundred years ago. Thirdly, her coven will be searching for her to reclaim her as their queen…and when they discover she is human once again, hell will break lose for Lenah and all those she loves.

Sounds like an exciting and unique premise right? Sadly the fanfiction-esque writing, lack of character development and serious Mary Sue protagonist makes what should be a great book into a hard-to-get-through slog.

 Inevitably hordes of boys fall in love with the beautiful, smart and interesting (despite the lack of evidence for all three points) Lenah; in fact, there was only one major shock for me in this whole novel (naming it would spoil though) whilst the rest plodded out exactly as I suspected it would.

The only thing that separates this novel from others in its class is the amount of research that Maizel has clearly carried out, along with the amount of thought that has gone into the vampire mythology. If only she had put that level of consideration into making Lenah genuinely sound 500+ years old instead of the general confusion at today’s technology and the occasional dropping in of a sophisticated word to illustrate Lenah's true age, the novel would have been vastly improved.

Interestingly Maizel uses Lenah to comment on the society of today, such as girls degrading other girls to make themselves feel superior and whether or not it had always occurred, which I found quite a nice addition. 

I found ‘I’ was way too overused – and yes, it is from a first person perspective but it jars the pace of the novel when you realise the number of times “I did this” and “I did that” it feels like an eight year old had written parts.

Nonetheless, I will probably end up pursuing the sequel Stolen Nights to see how the series plays out.

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[SYNOPSISFor 500 years Lenah Beaudonte has been a vampire. 500 years of seduction, blood and destruction. But she is sickened by her dark powers – and longs to feel the sun on her skin, grass under her bare feet, and share the breath of a human kiss. She wants to be mortal again. But is she really capable of being human, after her long years of darkness? Waking up as a sixteen-year-old girl brings Lenah many things – the life she has missed, taste, touch, love. But a vampire soul is not easily shed. And her coven – the four vampires she led in decadence and thrilling destruction – want their queen back . . . ]

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