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2023 Nostalgia Re-readathon | The Last Vampire #3: Red Dice
Their secret was out.
Alisa and her partner, Joel, are vampires. But Joel is also an FBI agent, and someone inside the government has discovered their secret. The government wants their blood, to study it, to duplicate it. They send a massive manhunt after Alisa and Joel. But using skills and abilities developed over five thousand years, Alisa manages to elude the top hunt. Unfortunately Joel is caught, and taken to a top-secret base in the Nevada desert. Now it is Alisa's task to free him before the scientists break the DNA code of their blood, and transform the whole world into vampires.
3.5 stars. Sita is back, with the newly-created vampire Joel, the FBI agent who was hunting down the serial killer in the previous book. This one opens immediately at the end of the last one, with Sita and Joel needing to escape a very tightly wound dragnet that has closed around them. Joel tries to speak to his colleagues, but he is immediately taken into custody, and Sita has to escape on her own. The first chapter is forty pages long and extremely action packed, so be prepared!
Joel is taken to an underground bunker to be studied, and Sita is trying to figure out how to rescue him. Once she gets in, she realizes that she has been betrayed by a person from her past, and it becomes a struggle of wills as to who will escape - and survive.
I enjoyed this a lot more than book #2, perhaps because it adds to the mythos surrounding Sita and her five thousand year life. Here, Sita recalls a time in medieval Italy when she met a young priest aspiring to recreate the blood of Jesus via alchemy. She fell in love with him (Arturo) and allowed him to experiment with her blood, until things went pear-shaped. She thought she'd disposed of Arturo via the Inquisition, but unfortunately she didn't. I liked the addition of the Catholic mythology to the Hindu-inspired spirituality of Sita, and the alchemy twist was pretty ingenious. It didn't hold up quite as well in present day, but it was an interesting path nonetheless. There is a deux es machina ending to allow Sita to escape, which is also more WTF than sensible, but hey! At least the explanation is somewhat plausible: it seems that final infusion of Yaksha's blood from the last book has given Sita a lot of new powers.
Arturo knows one of Sita's weak points: the loss of her child. In exchange for her blood, he offers her the chance to become a mother again, which is something she finds very tempting. At the end of this book, she tries again to transform herself into a mortal being. Was she successful? We'll find out in Book #4!
One final note: time is flying by at warp speed; apparently only two months have elapsed since the start of Book #1. Maybe it seems longer to me because we're reading only one book a year? IDK; I find as I get older, I've lost all sense of time passing.
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This might be the book I remember both the most and least about, at least thus far. I remember almost everything about Arturo and Sita's past (and that he was baiting her) but other bits of this book, including the get out of jail free card? Nada.
I'd also forgotten how the books are basically picking up right where the previous one left off. It's interesting to see which book is next in his rotation of non Sita books but I do remember a decent amount about what we'll get next year. Maybe?
I'm the last person to ask about time because third shift wiped out my ability to tell time and then COVID took anything that was left.
Stepback prettiness though!
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I think I only ever read the original book back in the day, so we're certainly getting into new territory for me already. I remember when I found these books at the secondhand store of awesome and win - I had no idea that there were originally five sequels! And then that he picked it up again like 20 years later and starting writing 400 page novels that sound more fantasy than sci-fi.
I have to say, tho, that I've really enjoyed this take on the vampire mythos, and especially with the whole sparkly bit in this book, I'm surprised this series was never made into a TV movie or serial. Maybe its better that it wasn't - I definitely like to keep my nostalgia in its original form!
I'm looking forward to part two of the re-readalong!
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I've gotta be honest and say I'm not sure I'm brave enough to read the newer Sita bits, though I should probably hunt down copies at some point. I think we've discussed the dividing line between his good/great/and what the shit was that books and how I'm not sure he's made his way back to good and not stalled out in good enough territory.
Which might be tied to why Sita never made it to the big or small screen before. I wanna say "Fall Into Darkness" turning out so poorly caused him to be more selective with things to the point that while I'm pretty sure at one point Sita was in negotiations, it languished in development hell instead. So instead the Thirst books came out after Twilight kicked off the vampire renaissance and you couldn't go two minutes without a vampire appearing on your TV or TV Guide cover.
Do we begin part two Monday? *dances*
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I don't remember us talking about this, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen, LOL. My memory is Swiss cheese and has been for years. I don't know how great the "new" 400 page sequels would be - they seem to get pretty far off the original track, just based on plot summary alone - but then, three books in, it's already getting weird, what with translucent flying ability, and how the fact that maybe she's human again?
Did we agree to read the original six?
I wanna say "Fall Into Darkness" turning out so poorly caused him to be more selective with things to the point that while I'm pretty sure at one point Sita was in negotiations, it languished in development hell instead.
Makes sense. I knew that at least one TV movie had been made of his other books and I remember nobody being particularly impressed by them. I know I'd certainly not count on mid-90s TV to get this world-building right, considering all the corners they cut for the ones that were more or less set in real-time.
Do we begin part two Monday? *dances*
Yes! I'm working on my post now :D :D :D
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Oh no, this got long. Sorry!
Pike's steady stream of books stopped dead in its tracks with "The Grave" in 1999. Sorry, had to go look up publication dates because I'm that kind of nerd.
Not counting his Last Vampire or Remember Me series, the last book I can remember pretty much every fan agreeing was good/great looks like "The Midnight Club" in '94. After that, things get a bit YMMV before leaning hard into wtf? as Cass will quote "The Visitor" to this day and I'm more partial to the "Starlight Crystal" as my last good Pike book vote. "The Lost Mind" gave me a migraine when I first read it and Cass just said (I asked) it was the turn of his weirder stuff, but holy shit is "Execution of Innocence" bad and everything after is um... a series of choices, some odd and some just plain terrible. Not sure if time will absolve some of these sins or not but I've never been in a huge hurry to find out either. Factor in the books being re-released for awhile with the absolute ugliest covers in the history of the world and then him coming back online weirder than ever and it was a bad time to be a Pike fan.
I'd have to re-read the Remember Me books, but I'm pretty sure book 3 suffers from late stage Pike-itis as well. Since he was releasing his series alongside the other books for awhile, I'm interested in playing the "oh yay/oh no" game as we re-read them and I see the coming next blurbs at the end of each book.
Did we agree to read the original six?
I think so! I'd say we can back out if you want but I'm pretty sure at this point we are committed as the story is very much linked once you've hit the end of book 3.
When looking something else up, I found a listicle from awhile ago (while Midnight Club was in production) that mentions "Fall Into Darkness" not necessarily being a ratings bomb (who knows, Pike himself has been known to rewrite his own history) but it definitely was a case of them promising to stay true to the book and then gutting it, getting called on it during production and promising to fix it and then most definitely not doing that. One day I'll find a copy and watch it again to see how much I like it as an adult, but I'll never be able to hate it because I do still love and mourn Jonathan Brandis.
Anyway, agreed on mid-to-late 90's TV/movies not getting Sita right, and I can only imagine the truly dark timeline where this actually happened. o_O No, brain, stop actually imagining it. Stop it!
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Looking at the list on GR, I'd say 1995 was about the time I stopped reading original-run books. I definitely knew that Remember Me had 2 sequels, and I do remember Last Vampire #3, but after that, nothing looks familiar.
I have all six Last Vampire books, so I'm all about reading them all!
I remember the brouhaha about Fall into Darkness, and how it was more a vehicle for real-life couple Tatyana Ali and Jonathan Brandis than being true to the novel. IIRC, it was pretty cringey, but if I saw it, I only saw it once and have no desire to re-visit it. Hell, I'm not sure I'd want to see a modern adaptation of any of his books, even though Midnight Club was supposed to be especially good? IDK.
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I saw *most* of FiD when it originally aired because our cable cutout during part of it, I think? Or maybe I had to do something during part of it and never did find the tape I know I recorded it on and now that'd do me no good anyway. :p I do still love the tie-in cover for it though. Can't get it back, library. It's been mine for decades now.
Midnight Club was pretty good, all things considered. Changes were made but I think most of them worked out. Not all, but in general I was pleased. Road to Nowhere is probably the one ep I'd recommend if you ever do decide to give it a try. Mostly because it's my favorite of the series and I will 100% fight people on that.
I need them to give me the Season of Passage movie they promised about the same time Midnight Club was announced. Give it to meeeeeeeeeee. But that's adult and not the YA so I feel more hopeful about the adaptation? But maybe I shouldn't.