tilly_wizard's reviews
174 reviews

 This was kind of a wild ride and not necessarily in a good way, but the author did make a couple of unexpected choices and it's always a novelty to be taken by surprise while reading contemporary genre trash.

I will get my worst indictment out of the way first, which is to say that this book includes multiple of those loathsome conversations which have become ubiquitous in contemporary/urban fantasy/romance, where, upon being introduced to some aspect of the supernatural world, the characters exclaim over how this (fairly bog-standard) fantasy setting isn't at all like the silly fantasy books they've read (or films they've watched, etc). This always comes off as the author protesting too much in defense of their own originality, and it's particularly egregious in the case of this book, which is being explicitly marketed as a combination of two other hugely famous vampire stories that have so far defined early 21st century vampire fiction.

Unfortunately, as a pastiche of The Vampire Diaries (TV version) and Twilight (which is the big selling point proclaimed on the back of the book), it isn't very good.

Most notably, the vampires aren't hundreds of years old, which isn't exactly a hate-crime against vampire fiction as a subgenre, but it does feel a bit like missing the point and consequently I think this will miss the mark for a lot of readers (e.g. me) who are fascinated by vampires/demons/gods/wizards etc etc because of the fact that they've experienced so much of the histories of their worlds in a way that can never be truly comprehended by us mere mortal readers. From a wish-fulfillment angle, this guy (Hunter) has the supernatural handsomeness and thuggish SJM-style slavering "protectiveness" over his "mate" which obviously a lot of people are into, and he speaks Italian which I think is supposed to give him some classic European aristo appeal (lmao), but I wouldn't be able to pester him to tell me about (say, for example) his personal philosophical debates about the nature of damnation with Dante Aligheri in the 13th century, so he wouldn't do anything for me even if I wasn't super gay.

The best aspects of TVD are the complex of relationships between the sprawling cast of characters, all of whom reflect various facets of one another (e.g. the initial conflict between the Salvatore brothers contrasts Elijah's touching but self-destructive loyalty to Klaus; the initial portrayal of Stefan as the friendly, self-loathing vampire and Damon as the hedonistic monster is upended by the reveals of Stefan's past identity as 'the Ripper' and Damon's tragic idealism; Elena's genuine friendship with Bonnie is contrasted with Katherine's dubious alliance with Emily; and so on), and the sense of place and time (both present and past) which is imbued into the town of Mystic Falls, which greatly increases the emotional stakes for both the characters and the audience, in this series of constant battles to save not just the people they love, but also this beloved home. Admittedly, by modern expectations the show did a fucking awful job of approaching the town's Confederate history with anywhere near the appropriate level of sensitivity, but the point is that a great deal of effort was put into developing the setting.

This book doesn't have the benefit of either of those creative choices - the handful of characters are quite shallow and it's a short book so we don't see much of most of them, and even scenes that should be "easy wins" for character-building aren't made use of because everything (other than the sex scenes of course) is so vaguely sketched (e.g. the characters watch movies but we are never even told what the movie is about, let alone how the characters feel about it); the romance leans very heavily on the overpowering attraction of magical vampire mating bond and the physical sexiness of the characters in lieu of emotional depth. Notably, quite a lot of pages are spent on developing the various relationships of the one character who dies at the end; on the one hand, this is a good thing because as a result he does feel like an actual main character who is part of the core cast group and not just a prop (even though he is blatantly death-flagged), but on the other hand, all those pages were spent on relationships which almost inevitably aren't going to matter much in the sequel, except as a memory.

The setting which gives its name to the series is the town (and vampire haven) of Red Thorne, but Raya is a stranger in town, and half the story (including the climactic showdown) takes place out of town anyway, so there's no exploration of the local quirks or history of the place.

The POV rotates amongst Raya and Hunter and an unnamed third character called "The Predator" (strangely, he remains unnamed in the chapter titles even after his identity has been revealed), who is stalking our heroes with some kind of violent intent, leading one to naturally assume that "The Predator" must be Hunter's evil brother Kian,

but in the climactic battle, it turns out "The Predator" is actually a hitherto unknown vampire seeking to avenge his murdered family.

Definitely the most surprising aspect of this story was that

it doesn't appear to be working towards a love triangle, and that Kian is regarded purely as a 'psychopathic' villain, seemingly without any sympathetic hidden depths. There is a suggestion that he has Daddy Issues but it was throwaway enough that I don't expect we're going to get a second book full of psychoanalysis about it.

I am so torn about this because generally I fucking hate love triangles but considering the inspirational source material for this book it feels like such a waste of a character. I consider TVD to be one of the only good love triangle (or square) premises ever ("premise", not necessarily "execution") because the story is just as much about the reconciliation of the brothers as it is about which one Elena will end up with, with the romantic drama between Stefan, Damon, Elena, and Katherine being the catalyst for that.

All that being said, the first Vampire Diaries book wasn't anything particularly special either, and arguably neither was the first Twilight book, so where there's sequels there's hope. 

I never found a reason to care about this series before now, but the new sequel is a vampire story and Mahurin seems to have okay opinions about vampires, so let's go

There's a lot to dislike here - Lou starts out as an unusually hateable protagonist of the 'strong female character' variety (she's violent and crass and Not Like the Other Girls because she wears trousers and swears a lot and disdains the idea of romance); the pacing is insane - this is a trilogy of big-ass books, but the characters go from hating each other, to being in love, back to hate, and back to true love all in this first installment; the prose is ham-fisted (prominently featuring my personal most-hated literary non-technique, where the reader is given enough clues for the answer to a mystery, only for the narration to directly tell the answer immediately afterwards, just in case the reader was too stupid to figure it out for herself); the setting is a fantasy world but inexplicably it's also just late-medieval France, including Catholicism (it's not even fantasy Catholicism!). For a story that is entirely about the church's persecution of witches, the religious history and beliefs of this world are strangely underdeveloped - the book seems to assume that nothing really needs to be explored in-depth because the reader will already be familiar enough with the pop-culture fanfic version of Christianity that is typical in modern YA (as well as my favourite "ancient" "historical" pagan religion, the 20th century Triple Moon Goddess, lmao), but there's just enough tweaking to make me want to know more - they celebrate Christmas, which is still called "Christmas" but it's only a commemoration of a miracle of St Nicholas, and not the birth of Jesus, who doesn't seem to exist, except "Judas" is still the eponym for a traitor, so there must be some kind of gospel-equivalent...

Amazingly, the book has one single redeeming quality that renders all of these flaws insignificant, which is the fact that, for once in this genre, it actually has a decently-executed theme. 

Admittedly this theme could have been foregrounded a lot better than it was, but the bar is so low that I appreciate the fact that it was there at all. Basically, there are two famous stories within the setting which serve as parallels to the main plot about the romance between Lou the witch and Reid the witch-hunter - the founding myth of both the witches and the witch-hunters is a tragedy about a witch who fell in love with a knight, and our enemies-turned-lovers do their bonding over a novel about two characters from enemy kingdoms who fall in love but die saving the world. And it sucks.

This is a big fucking deal because although enemies-to-lovers has been the big trend in fantasy/romance for the past few years (albeit that the definition of 'enemies' has been diluted enough to have become essentially meaningless), none of these popular books that I've read (or read about) have ever really directly engaged with the idea of tragic 'star-crossed lovers' as a literary tradition going back to Pyramus and Thisbe which, in its modern incarnations, has become loaded with all kinds of misogyny and/or racism and/or mental-health-stigma and/or USAmerican military-death-cult weirdness etc etc and which consequently, the book-buying, media-consuming, tiktok-influencing zeitgeist of mostly adult women are currently in revolt against. 

Most of these recently published books which were written in response to the undesirable ending of another specific story (i.e. every Reylo fic over the past 2 years) are contemporary romcoms, which conveniently allows SFF writers/publishers/adapters etc to disregard audience feedback and disappointed expectations about their own work, on the basis that contemporary/romcom fans and SFF fans are separate audiences, rather than a Venn diagram with a very sizeable overlap. 

The handful of Zutara and Dramione/Drarry inspired books (and probably others) that have shown up have tended to be either historical or modern/urban fantasy, but those never get quite as much attention, and are typically marketed as being 'inspired by' rather than shamelessly flaunting the 'fix-it fic' label, so they typically don't have the requisite amount of spiteful energy I need to live. 

This book is in that 'inspired by' category (Nina/Matthias), but it shoves its message in your face and thus feels like it has something to say about the recent state of fantasy/romance as a genre, instead of being just a nice little story in a bubble where the enemies live happily-ever-after for once, and it's fucking great. 

(I see that a bunch of people seem to be mad about the sequels, so if one or both of them dies at the end I swear I will burn the fucking world) 

Oops this book finally made me join the legion of Lila haters; it's fairly close to the beginning when she (tw: suicide)

suggests that Kell should kill himself while he's suffering from depression due to having lost his ability to use magic at the end of the last trilogy

. I'm sure people will make all kinds of the usual trite excuses for this (she wasn't loved as a child and had a hard-knock life on the streets etc etc), but nope, I'm not sympathetic because she has been in a solid, loving relationship for seven years at this point and there doesn't appear to have been any genuine, strenuous attempts at self-improvement to overcome this fear of attachment, nor does she ever introspect or feel guilty about it later. The relationship comes off as emotionally abusive more than once and it's too easily dismissed because most of Kell's POV is (justifiably) spent on angsting about having lost his magic, and later on angsting about not wanting to fix his magic because it risks breaking the magical bond that sustains his brother's life. Hopefully in the next book, he'll reflect on how fucking terrible Lila is to him in this book, but somehow I doubt it.

For the rest of the book, I swung back and forth between hating her and liking her; every time she did or thought something endearing, it was pretty quickly followed by something else despicable, and I never really recovered from that initial shock and horror.

Also definitely not helping was my supreme annoyance at how in the original trilogy, the question of how she lost her eye was a mystery left unanswered, and then in this book it isn't even 'revealed', but just casually explained as if it was something we were supposed to have known all along. I genuinely can't tell whether this was deliberate because it's going to be relevant to the plot later, or whether it was just shoddy writing.

Despite all this, I do have some positive things to say, for once! Some of my complaints from the previous books have been addressed (or at least an attempt was made), because Red London actually has some cultural features now, and Schwab finally explains how the royal succession works.

The depth of exploration of the characters in this one is much improved, and the domestic scenes between Rhy, Alucard, the Queen and their daughter are the saving grace of the book (although sometimes the princess seems like an afterthought, rather than constantly at the forefront of her parents' attention like you'd expect); after all the character reintroductions were over and the narration stopped constantly diving into extraordinarily obnoxious sequences of short flashbacks to various points over the past seven years, I genuinely enjoyed the middle third or so of the book more than anything in the series until now, and I also found myself becoming quite fond of the new characters (Tes and Nero, who we barely saw anything of); unfortunately I struggled to finish once the story deteriorated into an onslaught of Schwab's usual 'cinematic' action scenes in the last hundred pages or so, and the ending fell very flat because the drama I was most invested in (whether Kell's magic would be healed) was resolved, but the final chapter was the reveal of a very underwhelming 'twist' that I had guessed a couple of hundred pages earlier. At least I'm not suffering in suspense waiting 1-2 years for the next book...?

For now I am going to guess that the spirit of Holland in this book is a deception; if later in the series it turns out that it is really him, and Schwab finds it in herself to give him a more fulfilling ending this time, my opinion of her will improve considerably.

After having read the first few chapters of this book, I was already rolling my eyes at Schwab's indulgence in the vicious, juvenile attitude typical of recent (mostly American) YA towards Christianity - an early conversation between Kell and King George IV (surely the most fair and authentic representation of Christianity that she could have chosen, out of all the Christians in real-world London circa 1820) positions the Red Londoners (who apparently worship magic and the natural elements, which was not a feature in the first book and is only vaguely sketched in this one) as morally superior the eeeevil and stupid Anglicans of Grey London, who worship an invisible man in the sky due to fear of eternal damnation. The one bit of nuance that is given to this conversation is that Kell is unable to explain the point of living well if there is no spiritual consequence to one’s actions (a question which neither this book nor its sequel actually answers). Naturally, no non-despicable Christian characters are ever introduced to provide a balanced exploration of views.

The one other historical Christian (radical dissident Christian, but still) mentioned in the book (but bizarrely, never in connection with any conversation about religion) is my guy William Blake (again), and where do I even fucking start, lmao

Considering how obscure Blake was in his own lifetime, and how few copies of his works existed (Songs of Innocence and Experience was basically only circulated amongst his personal friends), having Lila (who is a cynical atheist) comfort herself with the memory of her mother reading her Blake's A Cradle Song, a poem wherein a mother compares her own baby to baby Jesus, sure was A Choice.

In fact, after the first few chapters, the book almost totally forgets about ideas of religion for several hundred pages in favour of…fucking training arcs, and a Triwizard tournament.

Nothing happens for 350 pages. At the end of book 1, Lila wanted to become a pirate, so in this one, she joins a pirate crew (none of whom have more than a name and a single unmemorable character trait), makes friends with the captain (who is secretly a nobleman, like every fantasy pirate captain from the past 30+ years); the captain is also a wizard, so he teaches her some magic, then she decides she wants to enter this tournament (which Prince Rhy has also arranged for Kell to enter in disguise, that’s the other plotline); the contestants (none of whom have any more characterisation than the pirates) meet up in a tavern, and Lila steals the identity of one of them…

There are some passable attempts at creating parallelisms between Kell and Lila (in order to lay tracks for the romance subplot), but really, all of this could have been summarised in one long chapter. The tournament itself could have been summarised in one or two chapters, because none of the matches really matter (beyond Schwab's idea of 'kewl fight scenes'), really it's just an elaborate and long-winded plot device to create conflict between Kell and the royals when it's revealed that he enrolled in secret. The four Londons (which are supposed to be the unique selling point of the series) could have been just four cities in the same fantasy world, and it would have made no difference. 

An unremarkable ending for an unremarkable trilogy. 

This book has the same plotting problems as the previous one - far too many pages of the mid-section of the book are taken up by the characters sailing away from the city under magical siege on a quest for the macguffin to defeat the villain. The macguffin in question could quite easily have been located in the palace (since the king has wanted one for some years), or manufactured (since one of the characters knows how to do so, but refuses on moral grounds), but presumably Schwab was determined to confine them on a ship as a convenient way to force character drama, and also to get most of the cast out of the palace so the villains can more easily enact their schemes there. The only really useful plot development to come out of this sidequest which couldn’t have been written in some other, more succint and/or poignant way is that Lila is made to grant an unspecified favor to the proprietor of the magical black market, a set up for a sequel trilogy that would not be written until several years later. 

The one thing I did really like about this book was that the mysteries of

Kell’s parents and Lila’s missing eye

were left unresolved . As an adopted person, adopted characters having no knowledge of, and no particular need or desire for knowledge of, their biological parents is something I really identify with and I wish that was more common in fiction to balance out the plethora of stories with the usual tropes about secret royalty and heroic (or villainous) family legacies and so on. 

The romance between Rhy and Alucard had some surprisingly touching moments and was much more compelling and genuine than the half-baked romance between Kell and Lila, but Alucard’s backstory about

his abusive brother trafficking him into slavery on a ship to cure him from being gay

feels like a cheap grab for sympathy and an easy, palatably unproblematic resolution to their past break-up drama; it comes out of nowhere because at no previous point in the story has homophobia been an issue. On this aspect, I still have the same complaint from my review of the first book about the socio-political situation in Red London being under-detailed to a degree that is inexplicable in a story that revolves around a royal family. Clearly royal blood is seen to matter, since Kell is adopted by the royals but not in line for the throne, so are there laws about the legitimacy of heirs? Shouldn’t we be concerned that Rhy is infertile anyway, since the book keeps reminding us that he’s technically a dead corpse animated by Kell’s life force? After the release of the first book of the sequel trilogy, it’s nice to know that at least some of the questions about the mechanics of a non-traditional royal family are answered, but it was certainly weak writing at the time. 

As much as I absolutely fucking loathe character-death-as-redemption,

Holland’s death to restore magic to White London landed okay, because it was foreshadowed plenty. Holland is only significantly developed in this book, and all of that development is focused on the number of people he’s killed and the circumstances of each killing; because he explicitly sets for himself the goal of dying as atonement, and is never given anything to live for, there is no surprise and little sadness in his death. My strongest feeling about him really is that he was wasted as a character. I also liked Kell’s guard Hasta, but he was death-flagged so hard for the entire book that it was almost comical, so when his death scene finally arrived I hardly felt that one, either.

Osaron, embodiment of dark magic and the force of entropy, is a disappointingly boring villain (largely because he’s not an actual human character with anything approaching real emotions or personal history or sympathetic qualities whatsoever), and the way he’s defeated is incredibly anticlimactic and doesn’t even feel particularly connected with the previously established concepts in the story. Since Osaron spreads his corruption through a magical plague that causes people to relive their worst memories, psychologically weakening them until they give into his possession, and those who are able to resist his torture and survive the illness have their blood turned glowing silver (regardless of whether they have magic), and there’s a few scenes about the importance of the common people of the city and such, I expected that the climax of the story was going to involve some kind of mass awakening of light magic in the populace (Grisha trilogy spoilers:

similar to the redistribution of Alina’s sun summoning powers at the end of R&R

). But instead, the world is saved by three wizards with two macguffins in a magical showdown. 

After years of this series being hyped as one of the best current examples of historical/urban fantasy, I finally got around to picking it up due to the sequel series coming out, and to investigate the recent accusations of plagiarism against Cassandra Clare (again, lmao) following the release of Sword Catcher, and…I am so disappointed at how thoroughly mediocre it is. 

 Overall I found it to be an entertaining adventure story, which has unremarkable prose and moves along at a decent clip; it contains nothing morally or artistically outrageous, but also nothing inspiring; in the it felt quite shallow and unfulfilling, as it has no discernible theme or message to impart, and I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve outgrown that sort of fiction. 

The central concept of four cities of London in four alternative universes with different levels of magic had so much potential, but that potential went unfulfilled because the cities were barely explored at all. The only landmarks seem to be the Thames, the palace, and the markets, none of which are described in any great detail; the one location given any sort of character or significance is the traditional SFF trope of an inn that serves as the gateway between dimensions. The political situation in Red London (where Kell lives) is just as vague as the geographical - Kell was adopted by the royal family, which logically would have been difficult to keep a secret, but there’s no indication that the citizens know he’s adopted, and he doesn’t seem to be regarded as the heir to the throne despite being the oldest of the two boys…there would be nothing wrong with this if an explanation of the customs was given. 

Perhaps in order to write this type of novel which is so heavily reliant on setting-as-character, where a real city (or fantasy version of a real city) is that setting, no amount of ‘research’ can substitute for many years of experience living in that city. Schwab is American and apparently fairly well-traveled around Europe; she attributes her experiences of London to holidays with her father, but without the decades of lived experience of Gaiman or Moorcock, her entire milieu is superficial and feebly pale as her White London, compared with the alternate Londons of Neverwhere or Gloriana or Mother London. 

What is most frustrating is that (so far) the four Londons don’t seem to represent anything. The one instance of intertextual awareness is when Kell is mentioned to own a book of William Blake’s poetry, as an artefact from the unmagical Grey London (the nearest equivalent to real London). Since Blake has been the primary ruling obsession of my life for years, I was begging for this to be made relevant to the plot, themes, or imagery, (e.g. the four Londons might have corresponded to the qualities of Blake’s four zoas, or aspects of God and man) but it never amounted to anything. Even the elemental magic system consists of five elements (the four classical elements plus bone), with blood magic as a sixth and superior form, so the four cities of Black, White, Red and Grey might be just a way for Schwab to use her favourite edgy aesthetic colour palette.

I always complain about YA authors who publish ‘adult’ novels largely identical to their YA fare only with more sex and swearing; this has something of the opposite problem, where the three main characters are all suggested to be some stripe of queer, but there’s practically no exploration of romance or attraction at all. The characters are still young enough to be in the upper-YA range (late teens-early twenties) and the story is weighed down by seemingly unnecessary and uninteresting bildungsroman elements

(Kell’s magic amnesia, meaning he has an origin to be discovered, and how Lila’s false eye, suggesting she was born with an affinity for blood magic

- these are the only two mysteries set up for the next books, and I will be very surprised if the answer to either of them turns out to be something imaginative). The magical services and improvements we are told that Kell has performed for the city or the royal family (within the span of about six years) would be more believable if he was older. 

The cast of characters is not very well-developed, so I don’t feel particularly attached to any of them yet, at the end of the first book. Kell is by far the strongest character, and his introduction is one of the most effective and best-written parts of the novel - introducing him through his magical coat of many colours suggests either a certain element of roguish dandyism which I always find immediately endearing in wizards (viz. Wizard Howl), or (as turns out to be the case) a degree of clever pragmatism. This trait is at odds with his sentimental, reactive behaviour for nearly the entire story, except for the one really interesting bit of characterisation he gets -

there was a past incident where the prince was kidnapped by rebels, and was rescued by Kell. The prince later pardoned all the rebels, saving them from execution, but Kell secretly hunted and killed them all anyway.

The hope that I am going to see a lot more of his ruthless and duplicitous tendencies is the only thing motivating me to read the second book. 

Prince Rhy only appears in a couple of scenes, so the only reason the reader has to care about him is because Kell cares about him.

I didn’t hate Lila as much as most people seem to, but her sole character motivation (to have adventures) is not something I find particularly interesting or relatable; she really only gets a pass from me for the totally superficial reason that androgynous crossdressing women are sexy. 

I have to assume that Holland is going to return from the ‘dead’ in the next book, because there’s hardly anything to his personality, motivations or backstory in this one, but Schwab has said she thinks he’s one of the most interesting characters to write. The true villains (evil twins occupying the throne of White London) are also totally flat characters who only appear in a handful of scenes. 

What is really lacking and would elevate the writing a good deal is thematic connections between the characters - it seems that all the characters should be foils of one another (Kell and Holland as the two last true wizards, in service to enemy crowns; the evil twins of White London and the ‘brother’ princes of Red London; probably Kell and Lila as magical orphans of mysterious origins) but not much is made of any of it; possibly this book is supposed to be all set up, but no hints are given that there is intended to be a pay off.

I had no idea this book existed before seeing it on a store shelf (in Australia, where Clipstone gets special treatment for being a local), so I guess the Publishing Powers That Be have decided that the Lakesedge books didn't do well enough for her to deserve further marketing. Them's the breaks.

In the pursuit of a 'signature style' and aesthetic, Clipstone has doubled-down on her worst excesses as a writer - this is even more 'just vibes, no plot' than her previous books, and she can't go for a single page without some vague but atmospheric metaphor about the moon or blood or honey or sacred wine. All the women in the cast are lesbian or bisexual, and the imagery is so overwhelmingly traditionally feminine (sometimes to the point of unbelievability - the clan of monster-fighting women all have long hair and wear long, pale linen dresses, which never get in the way but are very convenient for making bandages) that poor young Ravel feels a bit unnecessary as a love interest.

Certain concepts from Lakesedge are repeated in this, particularly the love interest being a very nice sweet boy who is 'cursed' or 'infected' by the dark power of an evil god, but so much emphasis is given to his victimhood and the tragedy of his lost innocence that he never feels remotely 'dangerous' to the heroine. I don't really mind this, I think sweet harmless monster boys are cute and fun, but the categorisation of this book as 'horror' and 'dark fantasy' is ridiculous.

The setting is claustrophobically tiny (with no indication whatsoever of how this remote outpost functions in terms of its government, economy, food supply, religion etc, let alone the rest of the world) and unfortunately it feels a bit derivative, particularly of Origins-era Dragon Age (which itself owed a great deal to the first ASoIaF novel), but there's a bit of Shadow and Bone in there as well. There is nothing new under the sun, and most (all?) of my favourite stories take a lot of inspiration from earlier works, but in this case Clipstone hasn't added anything particularly unique or interesting, twisted, or expanded on any elements of the source texts, so it's all just unmemorable and (ironically) rather bloodless. 

 At least this book is halfway self-aware of how stupid it is.

Considering how maligned Reylos have been since the very beginning, I don't expect that the novelty of Reylo fanfic being commercially published - and successful - will ever wear off for me; I will buy all of the Reylo fics, forever, out of principle, but that doesn't mean I can't regard all of them as peak cringe, in a grudgingly affectionate sort of way.
 

This novel has all the typical hallmarks which have come to define published Reylo fic in only 2 short years:

- the super idealised gay best friends;
- the heroine's distant relationship with her parents (this time they are 'disappointed' rather than outright abusive);
- the love interest's fractious relationship with his mother (who is a shallow, underdeveloped villain);
- the author's obsession with Adam Driver's physical size, which would be fine if it was actually used for some symbolic or thematic purpose in the story beyond 'being sexy' (but it never is);
- one mandatory but unnecessary sex scene which is forgettable at best and disturbing at worst, far more focused on the physical lust than the emotional love;
- unfunny jokes, many of which reference contemporary terminally-online culture and will date the book terribly (the climax hinges on the recurring joke that no one over 30 understands TikTok);
- the love interest's one friend and ally, who is the single side character who is developed just enough to be slightly interesting, so there can be a sequel about another pairing.

Cassie's One Personality Trait is that she is an artist - not like the other artists - who incorporates garbage into her multimedia art to criticise wasteful capitalist consumer culture - an interest which is never depicted as relevant to any other aspect of her life and behaviour. Presumably the genesis of this character trait was Rey's occupation as a 'scavenger' who collects and repairs broken, discarded relics of the galaxy's past and the Skywalker family (Anakin's lightsaber, the Millenium Falcon, the sacred Jedi texts, and metaphorically the fractured bonds of the Skywalker family and ultimately Ben himself). Bizarrely, in her own interpretation of the characters Levine fails to join the dots in any meaningful way, never relating Cassie's artstyle and conservationist philosophy to her task of 'recycling' an old vampire into a new man by rehabilitating FJF into the modern world.

The biggest disappointment for me was that the distinguishing gimmick of this one is supposed to be that he's a vampire, but...there is no vampire worldbuilding whatsoever. The backstory about how he became a vampire is delivered in a single line! We are told that all vampires get one special power (seemingly at random, it's not reflective of their natural gifts like it was in Twilight), which apparently can include the power to create things out of nothing, the dizzying implications of which are never explored. 

Volcel romances are the best, and I am mad about the 'virgin' being removed from the commercially published version of this story - and for what? FJF tells us that prior to his 100 years of hibernation, he led a violent, hedonistic lifestyle - reminiscent of 'the Ripper' Stefan Salvatore in the TV version of TVD (though TVD is the only pop-culture vampire phenomenon of the past 30 years that is never eye-rollingly name-checked in the novel) - but his sordid past (which should entirely redefine him as a character) seems to have been added quite literally as an afterthought from the author, because it never affects anything in the story. He never struggles with guilt over the people he seduced and killed; he isn't dogged by bloodlust. For whatever reason, published Reylofic so far has been allergic to the idea of virgin love interests (and heroines), so erasing what was (in the original short story) the love interest's defining character trait makes him, and this book, less unique and interesting.