This book has a horrible disequilibrium between complete sincerity and utter silliness. It combines real-world elements with fake ones, without ever interrogating anything at all, it seems. For instance, one of the only characters of color at this vampire school in the Alps is rich because his father owns gold and copper mines in Latin America. He’s meant to be one of Dillon’s best friends, a confidante, and a character we’re meant to like. Where his father is a baron of extractive and imperialist industry, it’s rare that the author delves into the backstories of the other characters - the characters that we are meant to despise because they are opposed to Dillon - or connects them with the rotten gains of colonialism. Every character is described as being supernaturally beautiful, and also skinny - the language changes but they are slender, toned, lean, thin, and so on. Where the male vampires are allowed to be bulky with muscle, all the female vampires are designated as skinny and thin - and that’s implied as part of their supernatural beauty and allure. It appears that Nicole can’t imagine preternatural beauty without it being explicitly attached to thinness, or musculature.
And the whole trajectory of Jeremiah is made worse when he is one of the people that betrays Dillon at the end. What is it meant to say that the only male character of color commits this violation of trust with “the animosity radiating out of him”, in order to uphold a wrongful declaration of guilt against Dillon? And though this turns out to be all fabricated by Celeste, the vampire who always railed against misogyny among vampire society, I think a point still stands here. Also apologies if you care about spoilers I guess.
Whenever the narrative tries to take itself seriously, it falls so short it’s almost painful. I can’t figure out why Cora is so special, or worthy of both Dillon and Bram being so into her - except that she wore Docs with a sheer green dress at a party. She doesn’t really exist as a person, but rather an obstacle and a target of Dillon’s misplaced lust. He has more vampiric power when he’s around her, or touching her. She is a mere conduit for conflict and his empowerment rather than anything of substance. Sure, she apparently had a vampire brother who was kicked out mysteriously, but we’re not given reasons to care, nor is this plot advanced often if at all.
A simple sign of there being a sincere attempt at worldbuilding is in the use of capitalization, of random designations that are mere steps away from being utterly foolish. “Vampire Medicine” exists, even though it is simply licking someone because the special saliva will heal wounds. There is a “Vampire Secret Service”, which is implied to be very powerful and behind many things in international politics, such as the disparaged “Havana Syndrome”. How? Vampires have powers over electromagnetic signals of the mind, which in attempts to sound scientific during the Enhancing Mind Power course, sounds more like an advertisement for a product on Goop’s website, rather than anything to be intimidated by. Vampedia is an online resource that only vampires can access because it’s ~encrypted~.
I’d be more able to write this off as being a silly, campy novel, except for every time it tries to have significance by linking us back to the real world. At every point, it really makes it obvious that Nicole isn’t necessarily trying to write a silly novel at all, but rather one that should be taken seriously. The long awaited and secret “Ice Challenge” turns out to involve a drone being used by “a rogue vampire group who use them to smuggle cocaine and black-market blood”. This type of alleged action is diluted because just pages before, you’re faced with the stupid acronym “VIVs” for “Very Important Vampires”. It’s a wonder to me that this was published, and even more so that the editor described it as containing “alluring sexiness” with “an edge of danger”.
Also. The ending was stupid as hell.