Book Review: Burned by P.C. and Kristin Cast

My Rating: 3/5

Zoey Redbird is the youngest High Priestess in House of Night history and is the only person – vamp or fledgling – that can stop the evil Neferet from raising all kinds of immortal trouble. And she might just have a chance if she wasn’t so busy being dead.

Well, dead is too strong a word. Stevie Rae knows she can bring her BFF back from her unscheduled va-cay in the Otherworld. But it’s going to take a lot more than hoping to bring Zoey back. Stevie Rae will have to give up a few secrets of her own . . .

This is the seventh book in the House of Night series. I've heard there's plans for 9, but also for 12, so I guess we'll just have to see how many there will be total. Like the previous book Tempted, this one is told from multiple character POVs. It was similar to the other books though, and that's one thing I've started to get sick of with this series. There's alwasy something new in each book, but in the end, not really much has changed. They're usually not much closer to getting rid of the antagonist.The end of Tempted was a huge shock for me, but that was about the only shock provided in this series. This book was entertaining and kept me reading because it changed views and storylines, and moved quickly, even if in the end, we weren't much further from where we were 2 books ago plot wise. One thing that has stayed consistent through the series is the narration, whether told from 1st or 3rd person, is written like a voice talking. It adds a lot of character, but gets extremely annoying after a while, and sometimes I wish they could be written better. I really liked the different perspectives though, getting out Zoey's head and into other people provided a lot more stories.

The more of these books come out, the more complex the mytholgy and religion of the vampyres get. 90% of it I can track with, but there were a few times I got mixed up because there was so much going on, and there's still some questions I have that hopefully will get answered in future books, or maybe I need to reread the series because I just forgot (Such as, how can Kalona be killed, isn't he immortal...?).

Regardless of my complaints, if you liked the whole series, you'll like this one. I enjoyed reading it, and I might recommend it, depending on who you are. It was a pretty quick read for me, even though there were a lot of complex stuff. Start with Marked, read through them all in a row. No time takes place between books and it's easier to do it that way and it's a lot simpler to follow.

*content warning: A lot of strong language, some sexual content