Review - Marked
How this got started
I have no one to blame but myself. I knew this book wasn’t that good, having read critiques, sporkings, and quotes. But I wanted to know first-hand about this book, to know why this book was popular to the point of having a comic series and a purported movie.
I failed in that regard as I hated this book. Maybe it got better which is why it gets praise, but if they had the qualities that Marked had, then I’m not seeing.
World-building
The world takes place in a world where vampires are common place and living among humans. They don’t have traditional weakness and powers, and they are created by Marking those with some sort-of virus before they have to go to the eponymous House of Night. The world-building is rather confused as vampires have been famous figures, but it seems only now has science actually tried studying vampires. There’s no clear timeline on when vampires became the norm, so that leaves questions unexplored, like did vampires participate in War World II, the Civil Rights Movement, or Women’s Suffrage? It also doesn’t go into how much vampires have affected society beyond movie stars. It like the writers cherry-picked things from pop culture and strung them together with vampires, not really caring how flimsy the string is.
Vampire society is likewise thin. I know it’s a matriarch but not who’s in charge. While I can surmise a high priestess has some authority, I don’t know if it’s local or countrywide or why being in the Dark Daughters is a surefire way to become a high priestess. Based on the fact that student deaths are supposed to be shrugged off, I can’t help but think that vampire society is cold and unnerving. The way vampire religion is handed is cringe-worthy as this version of Nyx feels out of place and connecting her to other religions doesn’t gel because why is a Greek deity suddenly be in the Buddhist mythology. The writers try to mix Nyx with a bit of Wiccan culture, an attempt to create something new that I would normally applaud, but having the personification of Night be linked with the five elements and vampire souls doesn’t work.
The matriarch aspect is flawed as well because there’s a nature imbalance of power here. Women can be leaders and healers while men are bodyguards and consorts. Like I said in my reading progress, a matriarchy can be just as sexist as a patriarchy, just with the genders flipped. Men are objectified and and are expected to fulfil their allotted roles; if they don't, then they fail at being a vampire and a man, as one teacher told a male student. But this society isn’t that empowering to women either as, despite there being vampire amazons, the role of the guardian is the man’s job, the women needing protection or romancing. So while a vampire woman can learn swordsmanship and martial arts, it’s man’s work to fight and romance, although makes me wonder about LGBT couples.
Vampires and humans don’t have the best relations, but the book never goes into why. I can get religiously as vampires worship essentially a blood goddess, but other than that, people being jealous is treated like the main problem. Really? Why would humans be jealous of vampires? Because they’re beautiful? There are humans that are handsome/beautiful without needing some magic virus. Because of vaguely defined magic powers? Yeah, I’d like to see them stop a missile or a high-caliber sniper rifle. Because they’re supposedly good artists? Since the book doesn’t say all artists are vampires, I’m gonna assume that Gavin Dunne (Miracle of Sound), Jillian Aversa, Zircon, Coheed and Cambria, and other musicians I like are safe. To me, the vampires come off like egotists with no real claim to fame as all the celebrities are real-world and there’s no made-up vampire ones, like Caleb York, lead vocalist of the vampire band That Magnificent Isle (touring in the tristate area).
Plot, prose, and progression
This plot is B.A.D.: boring, annoying, dumb. Remove the vampire stuff and it’s about a girl moving to a new school, contending with the queen bee and her posse, overthrowing her and scoring the hot guy. It’s every cliché teen movie/book plot, only with vampires. It plays many tropes of this plot straight, right down to the queen bee character, Aphrodite, tricking our character Zoey into doing something to humiliate her. What makes it even dumber is that Zoey and her friends treat this as Serious Business and not some petty high school crap because being the leader of the Dark Daughters makes Aphrodite a shoe-in for high priestess. And I’m just going ‘I don’t care’. The zombie vampire ghost students and Aphrodite’s vision of doomsday are waaaaaay better than the main ‘plot’. The high school stuff should’ve been spread out over several books, not dumped in the first book.
The pacing is awful, which is amazing since if I did my math correctly, the book takes place over four days, with Zoey taking down Aphrodite in three or two days. The plot is super thin, so the pacing just feels like padding, especially since the characters aren’t doing anything. It feels like Marked was part one of a bigger book that got split up for some reason. There’s also an absurd amount of soapboxing and preaching, mostly about the evils of marijuana; in fact, two and a half pages are just Zoey telling her friends (and the audience) that only losers smoke pot and that they’re stupid for doing marijuana to calm their nerves. It does nothing but grind the ‘plot’ to a freaking halt and make Zoey look judgmental.
The prose was just as bad. It was trying to go for a snappy teen feel but with Zoey being Zoey, it’s actually obnoxious. It makes references that today are super dated (who cares about Paris Hilton anymore?) and the attempts to be ‘funny’ come off flat. If I had to list any positives, it’s simple and thankfully doesn’t go into purple prose.
That’s it.
Character effectiveness
Before I talk about Zoey, I want to talk about everyone else. Oh yeah, Zoey gets her own thing. I couldn’t care less about everyone else. They were one-dimensional and existing solely to be Zoey’s yes-men or haters. Besides that they have no character moments or deep insights. Zoey’s friends pretty much fulfil their stereotype (Stevie Rae is Southern, Damian is Gay, Erin is…Blonde, and Shawnee is Black). Erik is the Hot Guy™ that exists solely to be ogled. Hell, Zoey’s friends practically objectify him and saying Zoey should get with him because…Nyx wills it I guess. There’s an ‘attempt’ to make him look deep by liking Star Wars but guess what? Most people like Star Wars so why is this some big deal? You know what would be truly geeky? Erik playing tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons and wanting Zoey to play with him and his buddies.
Now onto Zoey Redbird. I should be saving this for the Main Characters section, but it’s better if I let out here first. *deep breaths* I HATED her! Dear Lord, Bloody Gods, I couldn’t stand her! I knew, knew, someone like her in school and Zoey brought all the terrible memories. Hypocritical, whiny, selfish and vain, Zoey Redbird is the queen of bad YA main characters. Yeah, there are probably worse characters now, but Zoey was here first, dammit. She can’t see anything past her own bias like her mom is clearly in an emotional abusive relationship and all Zoey can do is think about how her mom longer cares about her and how she betrayed her and I roll my eyes at just how out of touch with people Zoey is. Yeah, Zoey, your mom was so horrible, it’s not like her husband (your birth father) just left her and she was in a vulnerable state or anything. The sad thing is, the world bends ass over backwards to accommodate Zoey’s viewpoint and it pisses me off. I hate whenever Zoey slut-shames another girl or insults someone’s physical appearance as if it makes them evil. Her friends are more or less minions, something she criticized Aphrodite for having; it’s rather telling that Zoey considers people her friends when they praise her, yet condemns people like Kayla whose only crime was liking someone she found hot. Very judgmental and petty for someone everyone calls compassionate and open-minded.
And she does only two things in the entire book: jack and shit, and jack left town. With this cliché of a plot, you’d think Zoey would be actively participating. WRONG! Zoey would rather stand around with her thumb up her butt until the climax where she does nothing and gets rewarded. What happened at the end was an honest mistake (maybe, I think the book hinted at sabotage with Aphrodite’s warning to Zoey), but Zoey made it about how she’s a horrible person and that she doesn’t deserve her position. The elephant in the room that’s being ignored is Zoey has done nothing but whine about Aphrodite being evil; her major plan was going to this party. That’s it. She ignored the ghost students, one of which attacked her just an hour ago, to focus on this stupid party. I am beating this point into the ground, but Zoey’s plan is to stand there and hope for the best. I want my main heroine to do something to earn her glory and not because Zoey, bitches.
Main characters
• Zoey Redbird - do I need to say anything? I’m skipping her, I am done.
• Aphrodite - the main antagonist of Marked and leader of the Dark Daughters. She’s the queen bee of the school cliché, always surrounded by a posse of equally evil girls and hating Zoey because she might be the new favorite of her mentor Neferet. She’s the ex-girlfriend of the hot guy and is slightly possessive of him. Aphrodite is a cartoon…and yet I can’t bring myself to hate her. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she’s does some morally dubious things like attempting to rape Erik and willing to let a plane-full of people die, but I’m interested in her mentality and the potential she has. I went over the mentality in my reading progress, but her potential as a foil to Zoey could’ve been explored. We could learn that she was like Zoey, new and unsure of this world she found herself in, but was taken under Neferet’s wing and takes the dark side of vampire culture to its logical extreme. Zoey sees this and decides to change her ways so she wouldn’t become like Aphrodite, because it’s not the fact that Zoey starts the book awful, it’s that she never changes. Zoey could’ve been unlikable in the beginning but after a confrontation with Aphrodite and seeing what she could become, Zoey resolves to change her ways. This is what we like to call a character arc. Have Aphrodite be something more than be a subject of girl-hate.
So in the end
Why did I review this? I’m sure there are some fans that’ll (probably never) stumble upon this and ask, “Akkakieron, is book was published in 2006 and the series ended in 2014. Why are you doing this?” To be honest, I’ve wanted to review this ever since I started my Livejournal, but never really had the time until now. The fact that this story lasted till 2014 surprised me. Maybe there was some depth added later on or they dragged out a simple storyline. If these was depth, I wished it showed up here. As it stands, this was just a bad book.
If you like this book, I am glad you got enjoyment from something I couldn’t stand. You can undoubtedly look at my positive reviews (I might make a recommendations list) and not like those, and that would okay. We all like what we like and as long as we don’t start swearing at each other, it’s all good. As for me, I’m not a fan so I’m gonna soak my brain in ice.
I have no one to blame but myself. I knew this book wasn’t that good, having read critiques, sporkings, and quotes. But I wanted to know first-hand about this book, to know why this book was popular to the point of having a comic series and a purported movie.
I failed in that regard as I hated this book. Maybe it got better which is why it gets praise, but if they had the qualities that Marked had, then I’m not seeing.
World-building
The world takes place in a world where vampires are common place and living among humans. They don’t have traditional weakness and powers, and they are created by Marking those with some sort-of virus before they have to go to the eponymous House of Night. The world-building is rather confused as vampires have been famous figures, but it seems only now has science actually tried studying vampires. There’s no clear timeline on when vampires became the norm, so that leaves questions unexplored, like did vampires participate in War World II, the Civil Rights Movement, or Women’s Suffrage? It also doesn’t go into how much vampires have affected society beyond movie stars. It like the writers cherry-picked things from pop culture and strung them together with vampires, not really caring how flimsy the string is.
Vampire society is likewise thin. I know it’s a matriarch but not who’s in charge. While I can surmise a high priestess has some authority, I don’t know if it’s local or countrywide or why being in the Dark Daughters is a surefire way to become a high priestess. Based on the fact that student deaths are supposed to be shrugged off, I can’t help but think that vampire society is cold and unnerving. The way vampire religion is handed is cringe-worthy as this version of Nyx feels out of place and connecting her to other religions doesn’t gel because why is a Greek deity suddenly be in the Buddhist mythology. The writers try to mix Nyx with a bit of Wiccan culture, an attempt to create something new that I would normally applaud, but having the personification of Night be linked with the five elements and vampire souls doesn’t work.
The matriarch aspect is flawed as well because there’s a nature imbalance of power here. Women can be leaders and healers while men are bodyguards and consorts. Like I said in my reading progress, a matriarchy can be just as sexist as a patriarchy, just with the genders flipped. Men are objectified and and are expected to fulfil their allotted roles; if they don't, then they fail at being a vampire and a man, as one teacher told a male student. But this society isn’t that empowering to women either as, despite there being vampire amazons, the role of the guardian is the man’s job, the women needing protection or romancing. So while a vampire woman can learn swordsmanship and martial arts, it’s man’s work to fight and romance, although makes me wonder about LGBT couples.
Vampires and humans don’t have the best relations, but the book never goes into why. I can get religiously as vampires worship essentially a blood goddess, but other than that, people being jealous is treated like the main problem. Really? Why would humans be jealous of vampires? Because they’re beautiful? There are humans that are handsome/beautiful without needing some magic virus. Because of vaguely defined magic powers? Yeah, I’d like to see them stop a missile or a high-caliber sniper rifle. Because they’re supposedly good artists? Since the book doesn’t say all artists are vampires, I’m gonna assume that Gavin Dunne (Miracle of Sound), Jillian Aversa, Zircon, Coheed and Cambria, and other musicians I like are safe. To me, the vampires come off like egotists with no real claim to fame as all the celebrities are real-world and there’s no made-up vampire ones, like Caleb York, lead vocalist of the vampire band That Magnificent Isle (touring in the tristate area).
Plot, prose, and progression
This plot is B.A.D.: boring, annoying, dumb. Remove the vampire stuff and it’s about a girl moving to a new school, contending with the queen bee and her posse, overthrowing her and scoring the hot guy. It’s every cliché teen movie/book plot, only with vampires. It plays many tropes of this plot straight, right down to the queen bee character, Aphrodite, tricking our character Zoey into doing something to humiliate her. What makes it even dumber is that Zoey and her friends treat this as Serious Business and not some petty high school crap because being the leader of the Dark Daughters makes Aphrodite a shoe-in for high priestess. And I’m just going ‘I don’t care’. The zombie vampire ghost students and Aphrodite’s vision of doomsday are waaaaaay better than the main ‘plot’. The high school stuff should’ve been spread out over several books, not dumped in the first book.
The pacing is awful, which is amazing since if I did my math correctly, the book takes place over four days, with Zoey taking down Aphrodite in three or two days. The plot is super thin, so the pacing just feels like padding, especially since the characters aren’t doing anything. It feels like Marked was part one of a bigger book that got split up for some reason. There’s also an absurd amount of soapboxing and preaching, mostly about the evils of marijuana; in fact, two and a half pages are just Zoey telling her friends (and the audience) that only losers smoke pot and that they’re stupid for doing marijuana to calm their nerves. It does nothing but grind the ‘plot’ to a freaking halt and make Zoey look judgmental.
The prose was just as bad. It was trying to go for a snappy teen feel but with Zoey being Zoey, it’s actually obnoxious. It makes references that today are super dated (who cares about Paris Hilton anymore?) and the attempts to be ‘funny’ come off flat. If I had to list any positives, it’s simple and thankfully doesn’t go into purple prose.
That’s it.
Character effectiveness
Before I talk about Zoey, I want to talk about everyone else. Oh yeah, Zoey gets her own thing. I couldn’t care less about everyone else. They were one-dimensional and existing solely to be Zoey’s yes-men or haters. Besides that they have no character moments or deep insights. Zoey’s friends pretty much fulfil their stereotype (Stevie Rae is Southern, Damian is Gay, Erin is…Blonde, and Shawnee is Black). Erik is the Hot Guy™ that exists solely to be ogled. Hell, Zoey’s friends practically objectify him and saying Zoey should get with him because…Nyx wills it I guess. There’s an ‘attempt’ to make him look deep by liking Star Wars but guess what? Most people like Star Wars so why is this some big deal? You know what would be truly geeky? Erik playing tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons and wanting Zoey to play with him and his buddies.
Now onto Zoey Redbird. I should be saving this for the Main Characters section, but it’s better if I let out here first. *deep breaths* I HATED her! Dear Lord, Bloody Gods, I couldn’t stand her! I knew, knew, someone like her in school and Zoey brought all the terrible memories. Hypocritical, whiny, selfish and vain, Zoey Redbird is the queen of bad YA main characters. Yeah, there are probably worse characters now, but Zoey was here first, dammit. She can’t see anything past her own bias like her mom is clearly in an emotional abusive relationship and all Zoey can do is think about how her mom longer cares about her and how she betrayed her and I roll my eyes at just how out of touch with people Zoey is. Yeah, Zoey, your mom was so horrible, it’s not like her husband (your birth father) just left her and she was in a vulnerable state or anything. The sad thing is, the world bends ass over backwards to accommodate Zoey’s viewpoint and it pisses me off. I hate whenever Zoey slut-shames another girl or insults someone’s physical appearance as if it makes them evil. Her friends are more or less minions, something she criticized Aphrodite for having; it’s rather telling that Zoey considers people her friends when they praise her, yet condemns people like Kayla whose only crime was liking someone she found hot. Very judgmental and petty for someone everyone calls compassionate and open-minded.
And she does only two things in the entire book: jack and shit, and jack left town. With this cliché of a plot, you’d think Zoey would be actively participating. WRONG! Zoey would rather stand around with her thumb up her butt until the climax where she does nothing and gets rewarded. What happened at the end was an honest mistake (maybe, I think the book hinted at sabotage with Aphrodite’s warning to Zoey), but Zoey made it about how she’s a horrible person and that she doesn’t deserve her position. The elephant in the room that’s being ignored is Zoey has done nothing but whine about Aphrodite being evil; her major plan was going to this party. That’s it. She ignored the ghost students, one of which attacked her just an hour ago, to focus on this stupid party. I am beating this point into the ground, but Zoey’s plan is to stand there and hope for the best. I want my main heroine to do something to earn her glory and not because Zoey, bitches.
Main characters
• Zoey Redbird - do I need to say anything? I’m skipping her, I am done.
• Aphrodite - the main antagonist of Marked and leader of the Dark Daughters. She’s the queen bee of the school cliché, always surrounded by a posse of equally evil girls and hating Zoey because she might be the new favorite of her mentor Neferet. She’s the ex-girlfriend of the hot guy and is slightly possessive of him. Aphrodite is a cartoon…and yet I can’t bring myself to hate her. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she’s does some morally dubious things like attempting to rape Erik and willing to let a plane-full of people die, but I’m interested in her mentality and the potential she has. I went over the mentality in my reading progress, but her potential as a foil to Zoey could’ve been explored. We could learn that she was like Zoey, new and unsure of this world she found herself in, but was taken under Neferet’s wing and takes the dark side of vampire culture to its logical extreme. Zoey sees this and decides to change her ways so she wouldn’t become like Aphrodite, because it’s not the fact that Zoey starts the book awful, it’s that she never changes. Zoey could’ve been unlikable in the beginning but after a confrontation with Aphrodite and seeing what she could become, Zoey resolves to change her ways. This is what we like to call a character arc. Have Aphrodite be something more than be a subject of girl-hate.
So in the end
Why did I review this? I’m sure there are some fans that’ll (probably never) stumble upon this and ask, “Akkakieron, is book was published in 2006 and the series ended in 2014. Why are you doing this?” To be honest, I’ve wanted to review this ever since I started my Livejournal, but never really had the time until now. The fact that this story lasted till 2014 surprised me. Maybe there was some depth added later on or they dragged out a simple storyline. If these was depth, I wished it showed up here. As it stands, this was just a bad book.
If you like this book, I am glad you got enjoyment from something I couldn’t stand. You can undoubtedly look at my positive reviews (I might make a recommendations list) and not like those, and that would okay. We all like what we like and as long as we don’t start swearing at each other, it’s all good. As for me, I’m not a fan so I’m gonna soak my brain in ice.