Another Teen Book Review

With so much to do over the past few weeks, I have not managed to read a lot of books, but I was able to squeeze in some quality reading with Alex Van Helsing: Vampire Rising by Jason Henderson. If we have talked, then you know I am a big fan of conflict in books. Why? Because conflict is what makes books interesting. The more, the better! I figured a book with the name Van Helsing (there’s a movie with the same name) would have tons of action in it, and I was right!

Alex is 14 and has no idea he’s a descendant of a famous vampire hunter. Alex attends programs that teach folks how to survive a night on a mountain without food and rescue skiing in the Alps. He is kicked out of more than one boarding school until he lands in a school on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. That’s the same lake Percy and Mary Shelley, along with Lord Byron, vacationed at when Mary wrote Frankenstein! This book satisfies the need for action and to tie a pretty little ribbon around it, Jason even managed to work in zombies. Yup, the slow and not very smart ones that will stop at nothing to eat your brains. Gone are the sparkling, irresistible vampires of today’s modern teen writing (Twilight by Stephenie Meyer) and in come the hardcore, violent, scary, bloodsucking vampires complete with a lesson on Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. This is the first of the series with the second to hit the library shelves in a few months. If Van Helsing is not on the shelves, you may want to scare yourself with Darren Shan’s books or perhaps give graphic novels a try with Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer or Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer and the Great Puppet Theater by writer Van Jensen and artist Dusty Higgins.