Thirst (The Last Vampire, Black Blood, and Red Dice -oh my!)

Well, another vampire book it is. *cracks knuckles and repositions self in rolly chair*

I must say that Christopher Pike has exceptional talent for writing vampire stories with twists. Yes, it is somewhat far fetched, and yes -I *have* looked up the ending to the next compilation of this series on wikipedia and despise the ending. But this matters not.

Thirst is a series written in the 90's but republished/printed due to the vamp hype cycling back around. Twihards and Draculovers alike will find this a page turner like few others. 'Thirst #1' contains the first three books in the 'Last Vampire' series. In it we find Sita, a 5,000yr old vamp, and an unknown enemy. Action galore awaits you, my friend, if you can get past the occasional weirdness thrown in. It's hard to define, but some words, or trains of thought, don't seem to fit. Oh well, moving on.

Sita enrolls in high school to meet Ray, the son-of-a-*detective* who has just been orphaned...but doesn't know it yet. While this does complicate matters slightly, Sita meets Seymour (who is dying of HIV from a blood transfusion) in archery class and finds him special. He dreams about what happens to her, and has a semi-psychic link to her. This book has it's own 'debunking old vampire myths' segment, which I will spare you, but needless to say : NO ONE SPARKLES. Which is good enough for me.

Also, confusingly, these 'immortal' evils can be killed with a bullet to the head or decapitation.....so what happened to being immortal again? That would suck to find out accidentally.
"Psh,  go ahead and shoot dude. I'm a vampire, I'm *immortal*. I don't die from a stupid bullet like you silly humans."
Bang. Pause. Confused look, *plop*.
"Oh thank god Thelma, I thought that psycho was gunna violate us or something, getting his spit all over my neck. Disgusting. I sure am glad I keep that rifle under the seat even though you said it would get me arrested one day."
"Well Earl, I wasn't exactly considering the possibility of -WAIT, IT TWITCHED! Shoot it again!- (bang, bang) *sighs*. I just didn't think a crazy convict or something was going to attack you any time soon..."

(Links provided for background info and the like)
Sita falls in love with Ray because she can see Krishna in him. When she was still young apparently she met Krishna when Yaksha challenged him to a duel and they sat in a snake pit while playing the flute. This story takes quite a bit from legends and mythical creatures (as well as historical religions), and has a narrative style similar to 'The Gargoyle', which switches effortlessly from past and present in it's story telling segments. If you have a bee in your bonnet about reincarnation, and other religious themes, then you might not appreciate their frequent mentions, but you were forewarned.

Ray is easily persuaded to be the boytoy lover for vampire Sita, but is eventually turned later when Yaksha and Sita have their 'lets die then, shall we?' show down. Lots of fun things happen, Yaksha is supposedly killed, and Ray becomes a vamp too. He is unhappy though, because he really doesn't enjoy killing people or drinking their blood. Dude, your a vampire now, get over yourself.

Book two enters about here with a new challenge: Eddie. So Eddie works at a morgue and steals Yaksha's body, which is not totally dead for some strange reason. He turns himself into a vamp and takes lots of power from Yaksha, then starts making a whole bunch of little baby vampires. They kill lots of people, Sita and Ray eventually both come and fight him. Sita meets the FBI guy, Joel, and he saves her from getting killed in the explosion that kills Ray and should have killed Eddie. Ed has a weird pervy mom, Sita kills Eddie, Joel gets turned into a vampire because he almost dies, and Sita gets yet another problem. Government! Wait, why no cheering? You think the government overreacts too!? Wow, imagine that...

Simply because the last book had way too many twists for normal people with ADHD to think of, I will leave that to your imagination.

At first I thought this was a little retarded. Whoop, whoop, a vampire. Wow, she drinks blood. She thinks she's bada**? Congrats, so does Rambo. Blond? Why not sign up for Miss America now and save yourself the trouble? But oh how my words only half haunt me. I still think this is too dramay for its own good, but I still really like the constant "Bond, James Bond" feel for action and adventure this has. Sure, it might dwell a little on the whole "I'm a vamp and I'm really strong and I kill people." bit, but hey, its worth sticking around to see the ending. I love Seymour, God bless him, but the ending I read about makes me want to punch him in the face....if he existed that is. Anywho, please don't go read the ending ahead of time, like muah (French people glare at me while sharpening the utensils they eat snails with...), because I'm probably going to go ahead and track down the second half of these things to read.

ENDING POINTS:
+ Action.
+NO SPARKLES!!!!! and pretty original/not-but-better-than-twilight abilities
+ The randomness of His stories and plot twists
+ Realistic feelings from Sita, if not from other characters (but even Sita annoys me at the end of this book)
- ohmigead how often do I have to hear people talking about how cool they are when they can wear leather, have blond hair, and never age while carrying trunkloads of ammo in their pockets?
- Why turn Joel? I don't get it.....
- Dear lord please don't do it!!!!! (For context please read the last three pages of Red Dice)
- Why did you do it? (Just read the last two pages then...fine....)