Review: Infinite Days

Title: Infinite Days
Author: Rebecca Maizel
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 308
Series: Vampire Queen Trilogy #1
Rating: 4.5 stars
From the back cover:
"I release you, Lenah Beaudonte.
Believe, and be free.


Those were the last words I could remember. When I awoke, I immediately felt a cold surface on my left cheek. An icy shiver rushed down my spine. 'Rhode!' I screamed. He had to be here. There would be no world without Rhode. A door somewhere near me opened and closed. Rhode loomed over me but he was a blur. Even in the haze of that moment his icy-blue eyes pierced me, down to my soul."


After centuries of terrorizing Europe, Lenah Beaudonte, with the help of the handsome Rhode, has been able to realize the dream of all vampires - to be human again. Now, as a raven-haired, sixteen-year-old, Lenah believes her greatest challenge is fitting in at her new school. But the challenges have only begun. The vicious coven Lenah once ruled is threatening the new-found pleasures of her human life, including the one guy who makes her feel most alive, Justin. Can this ex-vamp survive in an alien time and place or will her past come back to haunt her...forever?


I received an ARC of Infinite Days through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and while I was excited to read it, I was a little wary of reading yet another vampire novel. I shouldn't have worried. With this one, Rebecca Maizel has completely remade all the rules. It's a completely new take on vampirism and I really, really loved it. It was also great to see vampires portrayed as the "bad guys" for the first time in a long time. I could have enjoyed it just for that. But there was so much more. It was a fantastic book.

Lenah is a wonderful character. Her emotions are so real, and the way she reacts to being in the twenty-first century for the first time is spectacular. It's a lot of fun watching her adjust to the modern world, getting used to the technology and the slang. You can really get inside her head. And the side characters were awesome too. Justin is a popular guy with depth to him, and Lenah's first friend in the human world, Tony, is easy to imagine just stepping off the page and coming to life. I felt like the "Three-Piece," the popular girls who date the most popular guys, could have been developed more than they were, but on the whole, the characters were excellent.

And the plot! Yes, it's a vampire romance novel, but it's so different from anything that's already out there. Lenah's relearning what it means to be human, what it means to have human senses, and that includes falling in love. The developing relationships between Lenah and Tony and Lenah and Justin are beautifully crafted, and the impending danger of the coven is really well-done too. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the ritual used to make Lenah human, and the reader gets really engaged in that.

Most of Lenah's vampire life is revealed through flashbacks, so she's really telling two stories at once: what's happening now, in the present, and how she got to be there. The flashbacks aren't necessarily continuous, which can get a tiny bit confusing, but it tells the story effectively. And almost all of the flashbacks are really well-done. Some of my favorite scenes were in the flashbacks.

So, in short, Infinite Days is a really great novel with an awesome new twist on vampire mythology and characters that you will not want to let go of. Definitely worth reading.

Links: 
Rebecca Maizel's blog