Tomes of Shadowstalking

Welcome to the land of shadows, where evil is the greatest power, where nightfall marks the birth of terror, where your very soul is at risk. Join me as I investigate worlds filled with black magic and dark souls and encounter the monsters rule these wicked places.

This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

Elena Gilbert was the most popular girl in school...some even called her it's queen. But what happens when a new student catches her eye but seems uninterested in her? Why, she pursues him, of course, with a whole-hearted determination that astounds even her. The question is, however, whether she should be stalking Stefan Salvatore the way a puma stalks a deer. For Stefan isn't a deer to be hunted but a hunter himself, and one with many more years experience than Elena. Try, say, several centuries worth? Because Stefan died in Renaissance Italy and awoke a vampire. A hunter. And he wants Elena badly, badly enough that he knows the danger in pursuing--killing her, for starters. Elena won't take no for an answer, however, and continues her pursuit, unknowingly drawing another hunter to her...and Damon doesn't have Stefan's qualms about hunting, even if they are blood brothers. Can Elena fend off one's unwanted and unsettling advances while breaking down the reservations in the other's heart?

This first installment of The Vampire Diaries sets in motion a love triangle forged in the darkness of the past where two brothers killed each other over one young woman and are all set to do it again centuries later. The author's command of both present and past is as impressive here as her knowledge of Western mythologies was in The Forbidden Game trilogy. It isn't so much that she delves into extreme detail about the Italian Renaissance, but that she introduces just enough depth to make the reader aware that the scene in question is set in the past. It might be a word here or a description there, but it's enough.

There are some that might perceive Elena's determined pursuit of Stefan as strange and unnatural, but it works well considering the allure vampires are supposed to have...something that probably explains why Count Dracula has been such a potent character in the theater, both stage and movie. And yet it is painfully evident that Stefan regrets his inhuman beauty that so captivates. We can see it in his determined refusal to partake of human blood, but also in the way he struggles to resist Elena, who is not without considerable drawing power--perhaps charisma is a better word--of her own.

Although a YA novel like her other books, L.J. Smith's The Vampire Diaries--The Awakening leads you into a world that teeters on the brink between teenage invulnerability and adult mortality, and where the barrier between the terrifyingly fantastic and the attractively mundane is continually blurred and obscured.

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