New this Month: Untamed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

With Stephanie Meyer’s supernaturally driven series continuing to dominate the teen bestseller charts, it’s unsurprising to find leagues of similarly constructed books nipping at the well-conceived heels of Meyer’s success. There’s nothing new in this. The extreme success of The Da Vinci Code earlier in the decade saw the publication of literally hundreds of books featuring thrilling religious themes -- with varying amounts of success. Likewise, we’ve not yet seen the end of magical boys attending magical schools and learning about magic. Some of these have been terrific. Others terrible. Readers take their chances; that’s just how it goes.

Meyer’s success with the Twilight series has been so huge and so fast, we’ve not yet had time to find ourselves completely enveloped in tales of supernatural teenage angst. But we will. One can almost hear the presses humming. However, young readers with a thirst for books with that sort of bent are ferreting out existing series whose themes run a similar course to those favored by Meyers and her characters.

Among the best of these is the House of Night series being written by P.C. and Kristin Cast. Later in September we’ll see the publication of the fourth paperback original in the series, Untamed (St. Martin’s Press). The success of this series is not difficult to understand. P.C. Cast is a successful veteran author of romantic fantasy and paranormal literature. This is a world she understands. Pushing her over the top are contributions from her daughter, Kristin, who attends Northeastern State University. Clearly, the teenage mindset is something she understands. Together the mother-daughter team are creating a strong brew with the House of Night books, a series that has been hitting bestseller lists hard pretty much since the publication of the first book, Marked, back in 2007.

The protagonist of the House of Night series is Zoey Redbird, a vampyre fledged to train at the House of Night, the school she must attend in order to become an adult vampyre. And thus you have a set up that feels a bit like X-Men meets Harry Potter meets Interview with the Vampire all told in a voice as engaging and spirited as anything recounted by Meg Cabot. And that means good stuff for young adult readers who like a bit of strangeness with their brew.