In the world of teen literature, vampires seem to be all the rage these days. Inevitably, after the grand success of Twilight, authors quickly turned out some new vampire-themed series to hopefully catch the interest of young readers. The first book of House of Night, a book series by mother and daughter, P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast was released shortly after Twilight was published. Since then, four sequels have been released, the most recent being Hunted.

  I got into the House of Night novels about a year ago and awaited the release of Hunted in March 2009. I was already becoming rather irritated with the direction that the story was taking, mostly because the books were incredibly short and the plot wasn’t very organized. I had hoped that the series would finally come to a close in the fifth book and most of the conflicts would be resolved. However, Hunted proved to be just another twisted way of making it last longer.

   In the book, the main character named Zoey Redbird has been attending a boarding school for vampire fledglings for a while. Although she’s only a fledgling, she finds out that she has been gifted with powers from the vampire goddess, Nyx to control the elements. She is also in the middle of a huge battle with her ex-mentor named Neferet, who is supposed to be high priestess of all the vampires and the headmistress of the school. Besides the fact that Zoey is juggling about four boyfriends at one time, Neferet has released an evil spirit called Kalona, who was trapped in the Earth many years ago. Easy fix, right?

  So, in spite of multiple problems, the story was somehow supposed to come to a satisfying ending. About 323 pages later, it wasn’t even fractionally done. I probably wouldn’t have minded that the series wasn’t finished, besides the fact that I was getting bored. There just wasn’t a reason to keep reading.

  It’s always terrific when an author puts some really great plot twists into a series, but not so many that it truly becomes ‘twisted’. Hunted was just twisted. Every time something seemed like it was going to be resolved, another problem was stacked on top. The whole book was like a precarious game of Jenga.

 
  It became very obvious that these extra plot twists were just used to cover for even more plot twists, so basically, the authors just kept running around in circles and called it a story. It had a rather Lemony Snicket “I’m-not-going-to-answer-anything-and-just-call-the-series-finished” type quality about it.

 
  I guess a crazy story might work if there were complex characters, but the characters were just as flat as ever. No one grows, no one learns anything, and no one changes. For example, Zoey has about four boyfriends, is terrible at handling them, and even worse at communicating with them. If all the indecisiveness was taken out of the book, there wouldn’t even be much of a book. The rest of the characters spent much of the book waiting on her decision so I didn’t really bother holding my breath to see what they were up to.

 
  Hunted was very descriptive and the writing was entertaining, but the story could have used some work. Maybe just a little more organization could have improved it. The characters could have used some action and perhaps it would have been better if something got done. It wasn’t my favorite book in the series, but things can only go up from here, I guess. Hopefully, the next two or three installments will take a turn for the better, and I might just be able to keep reading to find out what happens.