Diana Tregarde Investigates: Children of the Night / Burning Water / Jinx High (Diana Tregarde, Bks 1-3)
Author:
Genre: Horror
Book Type: Hardcover
Author:
Genre: Horror
Book Type: Hardcover
Helpful Score: 1
This omnibus is my first attempt at Mercedes Lackey, and overall it was fairly mediocre. It includes all three of Lackey's Diana Tregarde novels, arranged in series chronological order rather than publication order.
In the first novel, Children of the Night, I was initially put off by the style -- very purple, adjectives attached to every noun (sometimes multiple adjectives), half of each page written as Diana's stream-of-consciousness thoughts, which were equally frenetic when she was bored alone in a shop as when she was having a panic attack. And while it isn't Lackey's fault (her magical butt-kicking heroine predates most others) the whole set-up seemed too familiar by far. It should indeed appeal to Buffy fans, but don't expect it to take the now-familiar subgenre anywhere new.
Then I was put off by a number of items that cropped up that read like anachronisms, whether they are or not. For no reason I could discover, the novel is set in the early 70s, after the Watergate scandal broke but before Nixon resigned in '74. Yet there is a mention of Diana wanting a personal computer -- and I'm pretty sure personal computers weren't available until '75. There's a mention of feeling like being in a Stephen King novel -- but he didn't get published until '73, and I find it unlikely that his was a household name THAT immediately. I grant, the times are close enough that there may have been a week or two in '74 when a person might have thought all those things, but they READ like anachronisms.
Still, around 2/3 of the way through after Diana joined forces with Andre, the plot picked up enough pace that I sped through the rest. Andre was my favorite character, though he doesn't break the ethical vampire mold in any way either, and though I cringed at the way the romance was handled, it was at least blessedly short.
Burning Water, the second novel chronologically but the first published, felt like a stronger novel -- I was involved right away, rather than spending the first 1/3 wondering if I should bother. Part of that was that I was now used to Lackey's rather purple style, but part was also that there is far less of the stream-of-consciousness italics that so bogged down Children of the Night for me. Part of it is also that the other primary viewpoint character in this novel, Mark, is much more of an active participant rather than victim, as Dave was. Very importantly, there is a reason provided for Diana totally missing the obvious answer to all her of questions for a hundred pages while Lackey got the action going. The fact that an essential clue simply slipped Diana's mind in Children of the Night annoyed me to no end, and while it was just as annoying here, at least she forgot for a reason.
Incidentally, the names in these novels annoyed me. Everyone has an extremely common one or two syllable name. That makes it very hard to separate characters that are introduced at the same time: in Children of the Night I never got the band members sorted out, and in Burning Water I still can't remember which of the Mountainhawk brothers is which. (I also had to flip back through the book and find their name -- again -- to write this review, because it simply blended into the prose without impressing itself on me.)
Another thing that threw me in both novels was that in both someone that one of the viewpoint characters is close friends with ended up dying -- but due to the circumstances of that death, none of the other characters seemed to mind much. That simply struck me as false -- no matter how much a friend may have brought trouble down on him or herself, I can't imagine myself being as blase as these characters were.
Given all that, I did barrel through the novel in a single afternoon. It's lightweight, has some humor to it, and while I wouldn't exactly call these novels mysteries -- the audience always knows exactly what's happening -- they are serviceable supernatural thrillers.
This third Diana Tregarde novel (both in chronological and publication order), Jinx High, is by far the weakest. It has the same weaknesses of the other two -- not terribly interesting characterization or plots, piss-poor mystery, and Diana being an idiot and not thinking of the obvious solution for at least a hundred pages. Unfortunately, it is also told predominantly from the POV of three teenagers (one of whom is the source of all the problems), all of who think and act like imbecils throughout. I know that teenagers often look like they don't have a brain in their heads, but they do -- they just have a different set of priorities than adults do. And when the world comes crashing down on them, they DON'T pick fights with each other, they band together and act like sheep. The novels still read incredibly fast, but I was pissed off at it the whole time. If there were any more Tregarde novels, I don't think I would read them given where Lackey took the series in Jinx High.
In the first novel, Children of the Night, I was initially put off by the style -- very purple, adjectives attached to every noun (sometimes multiple adjectives), half of each page written as Diana's stream-of-consciousness thoughts, which were equally frenetic when she was bored alone in a shop as when she was having a panic attack. And while it isn't Lackey's fault (her magical butt-kicking heroine predates most others) the whole set-up seemed too familiar by far. It should indeed appeal to Buffy fans, but don't expect it to take the now-familiar subgenre anywhere new.
Then I was put off by a number of items that cropped up that read like anachronisms, whether they are or not. For no reason I could discover, the novel is set in the early 70s, after the Watergate scandal broke but before Nixon resigned in '74. Yet there is a mention of Diana wanting a personal computer -- and I'm pretty sure personal computers weren't available until '75. There's a mention of feeling like being in a Stephen King novel -- but he didn't get published until '73, and I find it unlikely that his was a household name THAT immediately. I grant, the times are close enough that there may have been a week or two in '74 when a person might have thought all those things, but they READ like anachronisms.
Still, around 2/3 of the way through after Diana joined forces with Andre, the plot picked up enough pace that I sped through the rest. Andre was my favorite character, though he doesn't break the ethical vampire mold in any way either, and though I cringed at the way the romance was handled, it was at least blessedly short.
Burning Water, the second novel chronologically but the first published, felt like a stronger novel -- I was involved right away, rather than spending the first 1/3 wondering if I should bother. Part of that was that I was now used to Lackey's rather purple style, but part was also that there is far less of the stream-of-consciousness italics that so bogged down Children of the Night for me. Part of it is also that the other primary viewpoint character in this novel, Mark, is much more of an active participant rather than victim, as Dave was. Very importantly, there is a reason provided for Diana totally missing the obvious answer to all her of questions for a hundred pages while Lackey got the action going. The fact that an essential clue simply slipped Diana's mind in Children of the Night annoyed me to no end, and while it was just as annoying here, at least she forgot for a reason.
Incidentally, the names in these novels annoyed me. Everyone has an extremely common one or two syllable name. That makes it very hard to separate characters that are introduced at the same time: in Children of the Night I never got the band members sorted out, and in Burning Water I still can't remember which of the Mountainhawk brothers is which. (I also had to flip back through the book and find their name -- again -- to write this review, because it simply blended into the prose without impressing itself on me.)
Another thing that threw me in both novels was that in both someone that one of the viewpoint characters is close friends with ended up dying -- but due to the circumstances of that death, none of the other characters seemed to mind much. That simply struck me as false -- no matter how much a friend may have brought trouble down on him or herself, I can't imagine myself being as blase as these characters were.
Given all that, I did barrel through the novel in a single afternoon. It's lightweight, has some humor to it, and while I wouldn't exactly call these novels mysteries -- the audience always knows exactly what's happening -- they are serviceable supernatural thrillers.
This third Diana Tregarde novel (both in chronological and publication order), Jinx High, is by far the weakest. It has the same weaknesses of the other two -- not terribly interesting characterization or plots, piss-poor mystery, and Diana being an idiot and not thinking of the obvious solution for at least a hundred pages. Unfortunately, it is also told predominantly from the POV of three teenagers (one of whom is the source of all the problems), all of who think and act like imbecils throughout. I know that teenagers often look like they don't have a brain in their heads, but they do -- they just have a different set of priorities than adults do. And when the world comes crashing down on them, they DON'T pick fights with each other, they band together and act like sheep. The novels still read incredibly fast, but I was pissed off at it the whole time. If there were any more Tregarde novels, I don't think I would read them given where Lackey took the series in Jinx High.
