Stolen Nights

June 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-In the modern world, elemental magic is all but forgotten except by those who seek to use it to gain power: namely, the vampires. Lenah Beaudonte, 500-year-old ex-vampire queen, and her soul mate, Rhode, used elemental magic to turn Lenah into a human teenager. The cost: Rhode's death. Or so she thought. The adventure truly begins with Rhode's reappearance and the zealotry of a vampire from Lenah's past who seeks to learn the secret of her human ritual to become her successor. The tale is fast paced, with a lot of vamp combat and a complex weave of Lenah's many romances throughout her centuries of living. At first, this novel seems to lack luster in its genre, but timeless themes of love and the search for identity, in addition to the cliff-hanger ending, leave readers pondering Lenah's choices and keenly anticipating the next installment. Fans of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" saga (Little, Brown) and P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast's "House of Night" series (St. Martin's Griffin) will find their appetites for the paranormal sated with Maizel's twist on vampire lore.-Jamie-Lee Schombs, Loyola School, New York City

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2013
Grades 8-12 Former vampire queen Lenah Beaudonte is now fully human, yet her complicated past still haunts her. An evil vampire hunts her, while the four elements, the Aeris, punish her for breaking the world's natural laws. When Lenah and her vampire sire and lover, Rhode, performed a ritual to became human, they brought down the wrath of the Aeris, who decreed Lenah and Rhode could either remain human in this lifetime and never again be together or return to their previous human lives centuries ago, also remaining apart. As Lenah and her one-time vampire consort, Vicken, negotiate the usual perils of contemporary boarding school, Lenah must juggle the deliberate plotting of the evil vampire to destroy all those close to Lenah; the heart-wrenching withdrawal of attention from her soul mate, Rhode, and her human boyfriend, Justin; and her own decision to become and remain human, now more pure yet stripped of the incredible power she wielded for centuries. Maizel's writing and characterizations are more mature and graceful than that in many YA paranormal romances, which should attract a discerning audience to this sequel to Infinite Days (2010).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)