He was against her turning Teri into a vampire in the first place, remember, and in her weak state she figures he’d kill her.

She’s not ready to reveal herself to Immortal Boyfriend yet, though. So then there’s some wacky hijinks as she has to clumsily get the body out of the hotel and dispose of it. But the delivery boy has some, and dude does she drink it ALL. So when she gets back to her hotel, she orders room service The new body doesn’t have the five thousand years of experience and transfusions from multiple vampires and gods and saviors to abate it, after all. Nobody is sure what this means, exactly, but Sita is feeling blood hunger for the first time in years. Apparently she had a couple of days that are just blank or at best hazy, but then Miracle Baby Teen took Teri’s hands and looked into her eyes, and crystallized Sita’s presence. We start with Sita in her descendant Teri’s body, awakening to that fact at her own funeral. Is it obvious I’m teaching again? Not just because I’m going all loco on repetitive cliches, but also because it’s taken me like three weeks to write this. Eventually it makes me want to put the Book down and kick the Ass. And every time you think he’s drilled down to the smallest level of a Category, he names a smaller subgroup that needs its own Capital. The other authors just come up with a word to call something and throw an initial cap on it, and Pike leaps happily aboard the Proper Name Train. At least Collins tried to come up with catchy names for her Artifacts. But then every single friggin’ YA book about a post-apocalyptic dystopia started adopting the shit. You remember this: probably the impetus was Suzanne Collins, naming specific elements of the Hunger Games to showcase why they were relevant and how the country had accepted them as elements of the competition.

One thing Pike has totally bought into is the arbitrary capitalization of the names of things to make them Important Artifacts. At least it ties up the story of the Telar and the IIC relatively well, although there’s still enough loose ends to keep our vampire going if necessary (and of course it is Thirst 5 is still on the horizon). Is it trying to be smarter than other authors of the era and genre by bending the rules of continuity? Is it striving for a narrative that is just beyond his reach? Is it just pounding out Another Damn Sita Book against deadline to get that green? It could be any of those. Honestly, I’m not sure what Pike is going for in this book. Sita must traverse time and space, heaven and hell, the physical and the spiritual, and what the hell is even going on my head hurts. How did this happen? In seeking the answer, Sita will learn the secret to defeating the ancient race that imperils humanity. Only not - her soul still lives, in the body of her descendant.

Monster by Christopher Pike