Marked- A House of Night Novel by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Zoey Montgomery is a normal sixteen year old, dating the school's star Quarterback, and living a fairly good school life until one day at school a vampyre tracker appears at points his finger at her, marking her as a vampyre and cutting her out of her normal life forever.

Being marked means life will change for Zoey forever, and when she gets home, her mother is shocked to see the mark on her forehead and calls in Zoey's stepfather. To her stepfather, Zoey has always been the problem child- the one too honest to lie and pretend she likes him and everything is hunky-dory with her mother focusing all her attention on him and not her children. So his impulse is to call the church he is a pastor of, The People of Faith, and set up a prayer tree for her- not to actually take her to the House of Night, the school for vampires she is supposed to go to- because his church hates Vampyres.

Zoey goes to lie down and is taken with a sudden impulse to go see her grandmother, Grandma Redbird, a Cherokee woman. She packs some stuff and sneaks out of the house, hoping her Grandmother can make it all better. But instead, she finds her Grandmother out, and goes to find her in the Lavender Fields her grandmother lives in. But she is knocked out and has a vision of the Cherokee Goddess, who turns out to also be Nyx, the Patron Goddess of Vampyres.

Nyx needs someone to be her eyes and ears on Earth, and she has chosen Zoey for that role, to be the first true Daughter of Night in this generation. Zoey doesn't understand, but Nyx tells her to trust in herself and believe in herself- that she is wiser than she thinks. When she wakes, she is at the School of Night, brought there by her Grandmother, and she no longer feels as sick as she did back in her old world and old life.

Standing over her are Grandma Redbird, and one of the leaders of the school, Neferet, a teacher there. Amazingly enough, she's undergone some changes in the time that she has been out- her crescent moon mark on her brow has filled in- something that normally only happens with mature vampyres. Zoey is allowed to adopt a new name, and she changes hers to Zoey Redbird, preferring that name to her old one.

No one at the school seems to think she should have to give up her family if she doesn't want to- not even Neferet, who seems to respect Grandma Redbird. She promises to take care of Zoey and be her mentor at the school, which puts Grandma Redbird's mind at rest and enables her to be comfortable with leaving Zoey in the House of Night, and she promises Zoey that she will keep in touch, and that her mother will soon get over the disgrace of having a vampyre child and want to keep in touch with Zoey as well.

Meanwhile, Neferet takes Zoey to the girl's dorm and fills her in on some aspects of the school. She asks a girl named Aphrodite to show Zoey to her room. But Zoey is a bit apprehensive about Aphrodite, as she saw her drinking the blood of another boy at the school in a room she wasn't supposed to look into. Zoey marks Aphrodite as a bitch, and notices that her new roommate, a girl called Stevie Ray, is absolutely terrified of Aphrodite.

But Zoey and Stevie Ray become fast friends, and Stevie Ray introduces Zoey to the other kids who share her table in the Dining Hall with her; Damien Maslin, "The Token Gay Boy" with wicked wit, Erin Bates "The Pretty One", and "The Twin", Shaunee Cole, an African-American girl with a sassy tongue and a hatred of Aphrodite and the rest of her sycophants.

Since Zoey is being mentored by Neferet, Aphrodite invites her to a ritual of the Dark Daughters, the group she leads. The Dark Daughters are the pinnacle of Vampyre society- the future leaders of the race, if they survive the changeover into adulthood. There is a similar group for the male Vampyres, the Dark Sons, but they aren't considered as important- they will grow up to be protectors of the matriarchal leaders. The ritual will be the next day, after the temple ritual at the Temple of Nyx on Campus. Zoey agrees to go, but doesn't plan to join the daughters any time soon.

The next day in class, she meets the hottie that Aphrodite was Fanging, am older boy named Eric Night, who is famous for going to London to recite poetry- an honor never held by an American House of Night until Eric. Zoey finds Eric quite interesting, and Eric feels the same about her- or so it appears. But he disappears after doing his monologue, and Zoey comes to the realization that classes at this school are fun and interesting- completely unlike her last school.

She nearly misses the ritual at the temple, but during the ritual, she seems to feel every element as it is summoned to the ritual, from air to fire, to water, to earth, and even to spirit. She wonders if everyone feels this way, or if it is just her, but keeps silent for now. Afterwards, she must go to the ritual of the Dark Daughters, and even though Aphrodite seems to be friendly, she loans Zoey a dress and seems to try and make her a part of the ritual, Which Zoey finds lumpen and base compared to the one in the temple of Nyx, including passing the cup around afterwards.

The stuff in the cup tastes very, very good, but when Zoey later learns that what was in it was blood, she rushes out and is sick in one of the hallways. Afterwards, she sits on a balcony outside the school after finding and rescuing the cat who has chosen her- named Nala, and is surprised by her ex-boyfriend Heath, who is both drunk and high, and her ex-best friend Kayla, who tells her almost maliciously that she is going to be dating Heath now. Heath has come to bust her out of the House of Night, but Zoey doesn't want to go, and doesn't want him, either.

However, being close to Heath, Zoey can hear his blood rushing through his veins, and she kisses him so hard that she cuts his lip a little. And then she can't resist drinking some of his blood. It's only Kayla's return that stops her from drinking more and more from Heath. She tells him to go, but he doesn't want to. In the end, she gets him to go, but he says he'll be back. And then she's discovered crying by Eric, and she feels her personal humiliation is complete.

Eric talks with her about what happened and mentions that usually only adult vampires can hear blood, and can stomach it, let alone find it delicious. So she should tell Neferet, who is cool like that, all about it, as he doubts Neferet is going to be upset.

So, the very next day, that is what Zoey does. Neferet is surprised, but not angry or displeased- she figures it has something to do with the filled-in mark on Zoey's forehead. Instead, she gives her another book on Vampire Sociology to read, and though she'll still sit on on the third-year class, she'll be doing the advanced homework instead.

Next, Zoey must deal with the Daughters of Night. She realizes that Aphrodite deliberately wanted to frighten her off, so Zoey refuses to be frightened off. She plays dumb and pretends she had such a good time that she would just *love* to be part of the Dark Daughters. For the moment, she keeps her affinities to all the elements secret, except from her friends, and does a purification ritual to banish any negativity she might have picked up from the Daughters, and to banish the spirits of any dead House of Night students who have died on campus in the meantime.

But when the Daughters next meet to summon spirits, Aphrodite makes a mistake and summons the spirits of the dead- including some that Zoey has seen before. But when the Daughters backing up Aphrodite flee, cutting the protection of the circle they cast to bits, can Zoey step in to save the day and all of her friends from the spirits of the Dead? And can Zoey rat out Aphrodite for drinking the blood of the other students in rituals without being seen as a traitor to the daughters? Because the stakes now are deadly, and Zoey will have to do it all on her own...

This was a book I just couldn't put down once I had picked it up. I don't know why I avoided this great series for so long- I suppose it was because the library has had it in and out so often that I never saw the first volume- and I want to read a series starting with the first so that I never have to figure out what went on before the volume I am reading. But this one fell into my hot little hands, and I love P.C. Cast's other books, so I figured "why not?"

Now I am kicking myself that I waited this long. Forget all the hype that has surrounded the Stephanie Meyer novels- I read them back in the day and was never all that interested in them- this series has the "Twilight" series beat by miles when it comes to all the YA market. Zoey is smart, canny, honest and tough, but also humble, because she doesn't want to be seen as any different from the other Marked around her, even if she has been granted powers and abilities exceeding those given to other Marked vampyres.

Zoey is living in a regular high school with the angst, drama and cliques turned up to eleven. Not only does she have to deal with the usual cliques and homework/classwork, she also has to deal with the possibility of death on a daily basis- but not the death of humans. The Marked are not vampyres. Not yet. There is a chance that their systems will reject the vampyre change and that they will die- and all Marked must face the fact that it could happen to them. Anyone can die at any time.

And if that isn't enough, of course, Zoey must deal with the whole Dark Daughters clique, most of whom seem to be nasty sycophants who suck up to the current High Priestess (Aphrodite) and cooperate to terrorize the other students. Definitely nasty bitches, and not people Zoey would feel comfortable hanging with- but to keep her eye on Aphrodite, she's going to have to do it.

Once again, this series brought out P.C. Cast's lovely wit in the character's mouths, which gave me more than a few laugh-out-loud moments as I read. I'm not sure what or how much of the novels was the work of Kristin Cast, but if it's as much as I suspect, I forsee a long, wonderful career in writing for her.

Would I recommend this book? How could I not? This series is the anti-Twilight. No whiny characters- no heroines collapsing into a depressive stupor when the guy they love or date runs off without them, and with a story that knocks Twilight into the garbage where it belongs (No, wait, let me tell you how I really feel about the whole Twilight series...) I can't recommend this enough. How much did I love it? I went and ordered the rest of the series from my local book store- that's how much. Can't get much better than that!