The Blue Bloods Series (1-4) by Melissa de la Cruz – review

I have never reviewed multiple books at once, but the Blue Bloods series is a series in the truest sense—the books cannot and do not stand alone.  Instead of reviewing each of them individually, I am going to give my general thoughts on the series and maybe a few specifics from the first book only.  That way you can get a feel for whether you might like the series, without getting into spoilers (although, if you read the summaries of the first four books you get some spoilers just from that; but, from someone who knew them going into book one, it didn’t dim my enjoyment one bit). 

 So, what is this series all about? 

As you might have guessed from the cover art of the first book, Blue Bloods (above)–vampires.  And as you might have surmised from the euphamistic (or is it?) title, old-money/upper-class/highfalutin society folk.  Is it a clever allegory for rich people as parasites, leeching the blood from the hardworking proletariat?  Hardly.  The vampires in the book are quite real, and one and the same with the “blue bloods” of human society, with the implication that the term was coined as synonymous with High Society because the self-styled Blue Bloods–as opposed to the human Red Bloods–were High Society.  Before you roll your eyes and stop reading a review of Yet Another Vampire Series, allow me to interject:  they’re not the typical vampires.  They’re not sparkly, they have no qualms about drinking human blood, and they’re not exactly immortal.  De la Cruz actually came up with a treatment of vampires that I haven’t seen elsewhere (although I will readily admit that my vampire reading has been 98% restricted to YA treatments; for example, I have never read any Anne Rice, so if she brought this up and it’s utterly cliche, well, let me know in the comments, but it was new to me):  She cast them not as undead or human souls corrupted into demonism, but–in an interesting precursor to the latest Next Big Thing in paranormal circles–as fallen angels.  Specifically, the angels who rebelled against God and fell with Lucifer and are now condemned to an eternal (but not immortal) cycle of reincarnation as they search for the key to their redemption.  The specific group of Blue Bloods the series focuses on are those who came to America and are based in New York City, and have been for a couple centuries now. 

Basically, then, this is Gossip Girl meets Books I and II of Paradise Lost, as told by Bram Stoker.  I say it like that because the series is much, much more about them being fallen angels than it is about them being vampires.  The vampirism seems almost secondary, in fact, since the need or desire for blood from a human only actually creates a conflict in the story at one point in four books. 

The first book, Blue Bloods, introduces us to a collection of high school students who attend the exclusive Duschene academy.  Schuyler (pronounced Skyler, as her nickname is Sky) van Alen is the last and somewhat impoverished scion of a family that had built New York; her best friend is the nouveau riche Oliver Perry.  They make friends with a third misfit at the exclusive school, the mysterious and mischievous Dylan Ward.  Bliss Llewellyn is a transplant from Texas who was taken in by Mimi Force, queen of the school.  Mimi’s twin Jack is her male equivalent, but he ignores his power instead of flaunting it and using it the way his sister does.  The clear divisions between the in-crowd and the out-crowd begin to blur when Bliss and Dylan start seeing one another, Schuyler gets a crush on Jack, and all of them except Oliver end up together on the Committee–training grounds for the youngest members of the Blue Blood society who are just beginning to come into their powers and memories.

The vampires are normally able to recall all of their past lives once they are fully awakened to their powers, which is helpful for them in finding their soul’s “twin” to re-forge the partnership that makes them whole.  But Schuyler is a new vampire, a cross between a human and a Blue Blood and therefore an unprecedented anomoly.  And Bliss can’t seem to remember more than splintered images from her past; mostly all she sees is darkness.  When several young Blue Bloods are attacked and even killed–forever, not simply phased out of their current cycle early–the race is on to find out who or what is doing it and stop them before they can claim another victim.  The only problem is that the Blue Blood’s leader, Charles Force, insists that nothing is wrong.  Schuyler finds an unlikely ally in her hunt for the truth in Jack Force…but will his commitment to his vampire twin Mimi and his father outweigh his belief in the terror that besets them?

One thing that impressed me right off the bat about the series was the language.  De la Cruz doesn’t pull any punches on her vocabulary in deference to the fact that these books are getting shelved in the young adult section; she used a couple obscure architectural terms that I had to go look up to be sure I understood the description correctly.  It was really refreshing, and also totally apropos to the people she’s writing about–these were kids at one of the most exclusive and challenging schools in America’s cultural capital, kids who are globe-trotters from birth and would probably have studied such masonic flourishes at ground level in Europe well before they ever studied them in a classroom.  I will say, though, that this quality seemed to diminish after the first book.  The books never get dumbed down, exactly, but the language did seem to get a little less erudite from the second book, Masquerade, on.  The prose itself is also dense; from the page count, the books don’t seem that long, but they are a much slower read than most YA books.  Which is not to say they are slow stories, or boring, because they’re not; de la Cruz doesn’t waste time on too many side stories or texturizing moments.  Almost everything she writes ties back to the central plot pretty neatly.  They are just slow to read because her writing is so to-the-point.  You can’t ever flip on cruise control while you blow through a three-page description, because (1) there are no three-page descriptions, and (2) if there were it would be something so damned important you’d end up confused later if you skimmed it.

Really the most gratuitous sections of the books are what cause most reviews to mention the “voyeuristic” aspect of delving into the lifestyles of New York socialites.  Exclusive school full of kids who try to pretend they don’t have money by wearing homeless chic–high-end outfits that look like cast-offs–and model in their spare time.  Hm.  Interesting?  I guess so, if you’re curious about that sort of thing or like the escapism implicit in reading about characters who live that way, but for me it was a detraction.  Then again I am 4^th or 5^th-generation impoverished intellectual chic, so lifestyles of the rich and fangulous are, well, a little beneath me….Actually one of the most hilarious sections (and to de la Cruz’s credit I still can’t decide if it was intentional or not) was when Schuyler is complaining about having to fly coach somewhere.  She got no sympathy from me, for feeling put-upon about it.  Such hardship!  The fact that she complained about such things actually kind of undermined the real hardships of her situation at that point, but I figured it was trying to make the point of how priviliged these kids are, even the “poorest” of them, and forgave it.

Another positive note about the writing.  The summaries on the back jackets of the books make it sound like they have one main character, which isn’t true—there are three.  Schuyler, Bliss, and Mimi all have equal parts in terms of how the point-of-view chapters are distributed, with the various boys (Jack, Oliver, Dylan, and eventually Martin, who joins the cast in the second book) playing strong supporting roles. None of them are POV characters, although Oliver gets a paragraph here and there as special reports.  Sky might be considered the protagonist, as she is the most sympathetic of the three and the prophesied savior of the Blue Bloods, but in terms of storytelling time the three girls are equal.  Anyway, the point is that these books have three different point-of-view characters, and they are told in third-person-limited perspective.  That means (if you don’t remember or haven’t yet had your literary theory class) that you are given access to the thoughts and feelings of that character but limited to what they can see and hear, to what they experience, and to the conclusions they draw from those experiences, which are, inevitably, wrong at times.  For someone who reads a lot of YA books and gets tired of the ubiquitous first-person narrative, the perspectives used here are a nice change of pace.  It was fun and different to have something else to read, and the multiple perspectives really add to the story.  They make Mimi Force almost sympathetic, instead of the token mean girl, and they provide dramatic irony when you as a reader get to solve a puzzle before any of the characters because you know two parts that neither of the two characters would think to share with one another. 

The overarching storyline, as I said, is focused on the Blue Bloods trying to survive the current danger and ultimately redeem themselves.  There are lots of subplots, and to some extent the series is a mystery, at least for this opening block of books, as Schuyler tries to figure out what is going on and then prove to the rest of the Blue Bloods that she is telling the truth–even if it’s a truth they don’t want to hear.  I liked how big the story is.  It stretches all over the globe, and two thousand years back into history (or more).  It is, literally, a conflict of biblical proportions.  Ambitious, but so far de la Cruz seems up to the task. 

I say so far because the series is maybe half-finished, or perhaps not even half.  That’s actually my biggest complaint about the series so far.  These are not standalone books.  The action isn’t self-contained, and even while there is one big(ish) conflict per book that gets resolved, often that conflict doesn’t appear until the last third or so of the book, and there is so much more still going on that it doesn’t really feel like resolution.  I hate having to wait six months or a year to find out What Happened.  The first four books (three and four are Revelations and The Van Alen Legacy, respectively) are a nice quartet that ends with a breaking point between the opening act and the middle act of the main story, but I’m not looking forward to having to wait for each successive volume to emerge.

I also don’t especially like the transitioning between the books.  They don’t pick up right where the last left off but a few weeks or months later, and it is a mixed bag.  On the one hand, the device allows for more dramatic irony and interest as you’re trying to fill in the pieces of what happened between the end of the last one and the now…on the other hand, it seems a bit of a cheap trick to hide key information for a later reveal.  Plus some of what got glossed over sounded like real meat of the story, something much better to read about “live” rather than hear a re-cap of after the fact.

One final critical note on the general presentation of characters:  I’m just not sure I really believe that people who rediscover memories and perspectives from past lives as if they had happened in the current life could actually stay so true to their current personality.  This is especially true in the cases of Mimi Force, who remains self-centered, vain, and arrogant for far too long–even with the knowledge of her past, she should have been wiser and not made more full of herself by it–and Bliss’s stepmother, who never seems to grasp how real taste and subtlety work.  If she had memories of being the belle of the ball who set the trends, she would know how ridiculous she appeared and fix that in one afternoon of shopping.  So while I like the idea of reincarnation, I dislike their recovering of their memories but not changing as a result of that recovery.

Bottom line:  this series (as a concept) gets two thumbs up from me.  It’s not perfect–I mean, there are plot holes to poke if you really want to do so–but sometimes you just have to want not to poke.  If you can just let the books tell their story, you’ll be rewarded. It is a fresh take on the vampire genre, and I think it has much more appeal to a crossover YA/adult audience than most YA books.  The only thing to be leery of is its very unfinished state—her website speculates the series might go as high as 10 books, and there is an awful lot that can go wrong between a promising start and reaching a satisfying ending…plus you have to WAIT.  Six more times!  But I loved the first four books and would recommend them to anyone who likes vampire stories, or who likes fallen angel stories, or who likes forbidden/fated love stories, or who likes saving the world one demon at a time stories.  The writing is solid, the premise is interesting, and the space de la Cruz has given herself to write in allows hope for a resolution that is time-consuming and perhaps less-than-clean.  I will be eagerly looking for the next book, and that is really the highest recommendation I can make for a series.