Freak369's Full Review: Douglas Rees - Vampire High: Sophomore Year
Over the years I have read a lot of books that have revolved around vampires, their lives, past and how they have matriculated into modern society. Scouting the teen fiction room at the library I spotted a rather curious title, “Vampire High”. There was a pale faced girl lurking in the stacks with a rather long sheet of paper, she had a list of books that she was having a lot of trouble finding so I offered to help. Low and behold, one of the books on her list was “The Saga of Darren Shan”, after that we started chatting about books, movies and things of the like.. I was holding on to a copy of “Vampire High” and she broke out in a huge smile, “That’s a great book, your kid will love it” That’s when I broke out into laughter, it wasn’t for my kid, I’d simply run out of other vampire related titles to read. The teen fiction section isn’t my usual haunt at the library but until the other 27 books on my list come back, that’s what I’m stuck with. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, the concept of a high school named Vlad Dracul High School seemed a little preposterous but I was going to give it a try. I made my way through the fist fifty pages without even realizing it, the next fifty flew by just as fast and before I had three loads of laundry done, I finished off the book.
Vampire High
This is the first time I’ve read anything from Douglas Rees and I have no other idea if he has similar titles but I am definately going to check it out. Being an adult I wasn’t sure what to expect from this, it’s written for teens so there was a chance that it might seem a little on the weak side. That was my main worry when I started on the Cirque Du Freak series and if you read any of my reviews of that series, you know how much I loved it. Just as Shan did with that series, Rees keeps things grounded in this book. There are no outlandish concepts or things that will having you saying, “This is just asinine”. The opening of the book is filled with slams and humorous things that will have you howling [no pun]. How exactly does a kid flunk homeroom? Could there really be a school called Our Lady of Perpetual Homework? Can a teen disprove Newton’s law of gravity by jumping off a desk and flapping his arms?
Things start off in the small town of New Sodom, Massachusetts. Cody Elliot has been transplanted from California to this weird town and doesn’t like it, not one bit. He refuses to even try to blend in at his new school and when the report card comes home, things are “F’s” across the board - even gym class and homeroom. One of the funniest things in the first chapter is the special note that the principal sends home with the report card. “Your son has shown the intellectual development of an illiterate hurdy-gurdy grinder and the attention span of his monkey. It is impossible to evaluate his work as he has not done any. He is lazy, sly, and generally useless. I confidentantly predict that he will be spending the rest of his life in the ninth grade. I only hope it will be at some other school. Go back to California”. As you might expect, the parents are split over this, his mother wants to try to justify his attitude by saying that the move was hard on him but his father has other ideas, Cotton Mather wasn’t challenging enough for his son. He decides to check out other options for school in the area and comes up with two; Our Lady of Perpetual Homework and Vlad Dracul Magnet School.
Things start off weird and just go downhill from there. The people at the school are quiet, reserved and seem to lack any sense of humor - and that’s just the students. The principal, Mr. Horvath, was as tall as a tree but that wasn’t as strange as the large dog Cody encounters. Charon, in this book named after the ferryman of Hades [but also the name of a moon], is to be Master Cody’s guide on his first day at Vlad Dracul High School. Everything around him is strange, not ‘new’ like it would be if you were just dropped into unfamiliar surroundings but strange. Moreover, the academic record of the school is impeccable; all the students that graduate from good old Vlad Dracul go on to prestigious colleges, get hired by the best firms and live the good life. Cory was feeling like a little fish in an ocean full of snapping sharks and he hadn’t even left the principal’s office. When the subject of sports came up, Horvath was five steps ahead of everyone else, water polo would be Cory’s destiny.
When he gets his class schedule, something that was already prepared for him, it had all the basic classes you would expect a ninth grader to have. Science, math, language arts, dinner. Dinner? In the middle of the afternoon? That was just one of the many peculiarities of the place but it beat having to deal with his old school. The students looked at him in passing but never really went out of their way to welcome him. Teachers were the same way, they’d start chatting him up and when they saw the puzzled look on his face all they would say in a questioning tone was, “Water polo?”. When he’d shake his head yes, they would walk away muttering. What was the big deal with water polo? Did they have some penchant for it? No, the secret, later revealed to him by a small pale looking boy was that none of the ‘regular’ students could go in the water, in fact, they were scared to death of it. The first person to befriend him was Justin, actually it was Cory that saved him from being dropped into a small stream when some of the bigger kids decided to pick on him. That set things in motion for Cory to learn the in’s and out’s of Vlad Dracul and Justin was just the person to fill him in on everything.
The school was made up mostly of jenti, vampires. They lived in New Sodom in peace with humans, called gadge, after coming to an agreement. Both sides agreed to leave the other alone and things had always worked out great for both sides. The state was dead set on trying to find some way to close down the school because, well, they just hated the jenti. Water polo was their most obvious way to do so; if Vlad Dracul couldn’t have a team of players then they would not meet the states requirement for sports and they would be closed down. That’s where the gadge came in; they were humans, mostly the kids who had gotten thrown out of every other school. In exchange for their playing on the team they would receive A’s in all their classes without ever having to lift a finger; homework didn’t matter and they didn’t even have to attend class. When they would graduate they would go to the finest colleges and be given jobs that would ensure that they lived a very comfortable life. All this in exchange for playing water polo? There had to be a catch, somewhere, on some level, it just seemed too good to be true.
As Cory started to make his way through his days at Vlad Dracul he made another friend, the very beautiful and enchanting Ileana Antonescu. The budding romance between them takes almost the whole course of the book to blossom but when it does, it’s done tastefully - no wild sexual romps on the front lawn, in fact, it never goes beyond a few kissed and long hugs. There are a few storylines that you will come across in the book -Cory struggling with his academics and his dedication to get honest grades, his relationship with Ileana, friendship with Justin and hatred from Gregor and his friends. No matter how hard he tries, Cory never seems to fit in anywhere in the school, even when it comes to his human team makes on the water polo team. There are a ton of interesting twists where the different storylines cross each other - just one of the many reasons why this book is an awesome read and something that will keep you glues to it until the very last page.
My Take
I would suggest this book for any teen [or adult for that matter] that has an interest in vampire related stories. This is nothing like the Cirque Du Freak story but it has the same type of appeal, something that you start reading and you can’t put it down. There are a couple of slower parts that seem to drag on a little but as a whole, it’s a very interesting read. There’s a good bit of ‘educational’ stuff in it to; with references to “The Beauty And The Beast”, Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales, Charon, Mozart and others. This might be just what kids need to explore other things outside the book. To me this isn’t written on a ‘teen’ level but from a teen perspective with things like peer pressure, love and academics being ever present themes to deal with. You see the main character go from being a complete slacker to developing his own sense of self pride, even when he knows that there is no real way he could ever survive in any of the given situations without some help. Friendship is another thing that the book stresses, the underdog comes out shining.
The Bottom Line
There aren’t a lot of books that completely distract me from my everyday run of the mill tasks, books that I feel compelled to read from cover to cover as quickly as possible but that what happened with this one. The plot is interesting but never goes over the edge with extravagant or absurd plot twists. While the idea of a vampire filled high school might seem comical to some adults, if you give this book a chance you’ll get some extremely biting humor [no pun], a nice twist on the vampire history and a whole hell of a lot of sarcasm. I can’t believe that no one else has written a review of this book, it’s been out since 2003 so come on people, get your copy of “Vampire High” and sink your teeth into it!
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