Oh, what a disappointment! Betrayed is the second book in PC and Kristin Cast’s House of Night series. Barely two weeks before I picked up Betrayed I read, loved and gave a gushing 5-star review of the first book in the House of Night series called Marked.
I really enjoyed Marked for its descriptions of ancient elemental magic and the way this was interwoven with Native American mythology. I thought it was original and had an interesting take on the vampyre mythology. Most of all, I loved the slow-burning romance with the strong, clever and mysterious Erik and I liked the strength and character of the protagonist Zoey.
My opinion of this book however is that the only person betrayed here is the reader.
Zoey is shown to have little to no character as she strings along three boys and is ultimately responsible for the death of two others. I mentioned in my review of the first book that I did not take offence to what other readers had described as the authors’ overt and constant moralising as I had been a headstrong and opinionated teenager myself and felt that this read quite true. But cheating on people and treating them like commodities is a bit rich coming from a character who has supposedly high moral standing.
From being principled enough to support Zoey in the face of huge peer pressure to the contrary in Marked, Erik becomes nothing more than a cardboard cut-out of a boy in Betrayed. He is a mere disciple of Zoey now or better yet, a lap dog.
To be fair, there is an actual betrayal in Betrayed but so much of the book is spent on superfluous rubbish and minor details and then you get to the end to find a glorified “to be continued” notice.
How lame.
I was actually almost offended by this and the very English (and slightly rude) saying “taking the piss” comes to mind when I try to explain it. Not enough happened in this book to draw it out over two volumes and I just don’t believe that they couldn't have finished the story in this book. I don’t know what the actual story behind it was but I get the feeling that they were overwhelmed by the success of the first book and wanted to ensure that they could ride the wave for at least two more books.
I’ll definitely read the next book in the series Chosen but I’ll be borrowing it from the library this time and not rushing out and buying it like I did with the first two books. I’ve heard that Chosen is quite good so we’ll see; maybe I will land up buying it in the end.
I give Betrayed three stars and reserve the right to come back and reduce that to two stars!
The Host by Stephenie Meyer is just the type of body-snatching, brink of the extinction of humankind type of science fiction tale I’ve always loved. The premise isn’t entirely original: worm-like parasites attach themselves to the central nervous systems of human hosts making them nothing more than puppets. They have the misguided belief that humanity is wasted on humans and that they can do a better job of running Earth than we ever did. 
