Brief Review: The Fledgling Handbook 101

House of Night Series: (#1) Marked★ (#2) Betrayed★ (#3) Chosen★ (#4) Untamed★ (#5) Hunted★ (#6) Tempted★ (#7) Burned

Upcoming: (#8) Awakened 1/4/11; 336 pages

Authors: P.C. Cast☆Kristin Cast

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Thanks Picasa 3 and Youtube.com for helping me put up this video!

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If you've watched the above video, you'll see that the handbook looks pretty neat. It has a lot of great pictures, mostly depicting ancient paintings and artifacts, which aroused my interest while reading. The thing I found the coolest about this first guide into the HoN series was it being written as though you are a student in the House of Night, as if you're a fledgling making the transition to adult vampyre. It talks a lot about what happens, in terms of biology, when you are Marked and are making the Change. It goes onto the rituals performed throughout HoN, their histories, the priestesses who performed them over the centuries. The handbook then proceeds to talk about human connection to vampyre history, the vampyres as a whole, and how the stories and myths humans grow up with aren't actually the entire truth. The story that held the most appeal for me would be "The Tragedy of Pompeii", where the story of Theodora and Antonia is told. The love between Theodora and her warrior; the bond of sisterhood, of twins; the selfish Brutus whose madness cost many; and the unexpected outburst of the "brooding mountain" Vesuvius that consumed "Pompeii and Herculaneum, [where] so many human consorts [died] that it is said that an uncountable number of vampyres lost their lives that day attempting to save their humans from death..." (106), makes for an incredibly woven tragedy story by the remarkable P.C. Cast.

When I was done reading it, I did feel that I gained some, if only small, previously unknown knowledge of the vampyres of the House of Night. I'm glad that I have the Fledgling Handbook 101 in my possession, a new addition to my growing collection of this amazing series.

Thanks for reading!

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By far the best cover in the entire series...

...right?