The Shadow of Death by Christopher Pike (The Last Vampire 8, or Thirst 4..)

Thirst 4: The Shadow of Death by Christopher Pike
Release Date: August 9th 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Add it: Goodreads
Overall:  ♥♥♥♥♥

Firstly, I will try to leave out spoilers in this review as I haven't reviewed the first four but this will probably just be a ran trying to contain my love for the genius that is Mr. Pike. Oh, and I will quite happily read the first four again even if it wasn't for reviewing purposes :)

Secondly, the "Thirst" covers are seriously ugly and having two seperate releases, The Last Vampire and Thirst for the same story is ANNOYING. All of my copies of Sita's story is the Last Vampire edition and now The Shadow of Death is only Thirst? WTF. THIS ANNOYS ME PEOPLE. STICK WITH ONE EDITION! Plus, the chick on The Last Vampire is 100947x hotter than the chick on Thirst.

Sweeping statement... THIS BOOK IS BRILLIANT FROM START TO FINISH!! I was so so excited to read this book and after finishing this book, I had to calm down. Every book in this series gets me so worked up that by the time I finish I'm practially gasping for air. No word of a lie. Mr. Pike just manages to drag the reader so deep under that reading this series is one of the most wonderful reading experiences ever.

To those who haven't heard of this series, I'll brief you... Sita is the main character, she is a 5000 year old vampire, has been through a lot, is extremely powerful and has made some awesome buddies along the way, the main awesome buddy being an author named Seymour, in which she has a psychic connection with.

The story begins EXACTLY where the last one left us (which was one of the worst and BEST cliffhangers of all time) and subtley reminds us of everything that happened in the last book. Mr. Pike is amazing at doing this, he reminds us what happened in the last book without giving a full blown info dump at the beginning of the book and without giving us "My name is Sita and I am 5000 years old and I am blonde and stuff" like other books, because quite honestly, WE DON'T WANT ANOTHER DESCRIPTION OF THE CHARACTERS APPEARANCE. 

There were so many twists and turns in this installment and I found myself so involved in the story that I would dream about it and worry for the characters when I went to bed at night (I'm NOT crazy, just extremely invested in the characters!!). 

This installment, in addition to all the others, had a lot of religious qualities to it. I am an athiest, if somebody is religious, that's awesome. However, if somebody tries to shove their religion down my throat, tells me I'm going to burn in hell for my sins or even puts an excerpt from the bible in my mailbox (this happened about a week ago), THEN I no longer care what the person has to say about their religion. Christopher Pike talks religion and I have a feeling he is very religious, however he writes about it in a way that is not the above. The religion talk and mention of god - or Krishna, the devil, Lucifer, angels and demons in this series makes me want to learn more, I love it, I love the mythology of god (I say this as an athiest, please don't take any offence) and what's even more amazing about Mr. Pike is that he is clearly open to the idea that there is 'one god' and that god is the same as other gods in other religions, that all religions have the same basic belief of the divine. As I said, I personally do not believe in god but this series presents religion in a beautiful, personal way to Sita.

In regards to some spoilers, which I'm not mentioning as this is (possibly, I HOPE NOT) the last book in the series, I had a feeling about Shanti as soon as the original book was present again (this will not make sense to those who have not read the book) but I could absolutely not prepare myself for what actually happened!

I really really really hope this isn't the last installment and I have a feeling it's not, simply due to the fact that Mr. Pike has been constantly teasing us about John, Paula and the CII video game. I am going to use my own psychic abilities here and predict there will be a next book and it will answer some of my questions about the above.

Overall, I want more Sita, I always want more Sita. She is easily one of my all time favourite characters and I want more of her amazing story.

Thankyou Christopher Pike for giving us Last Vampire fans yet another brilliant story.

BONUS TIME!!

Compare the first Thirst cover to the first Last Vampire cover. Tell me which Sita you think is better looking (or just which cover is nicer).  My vote goes to number two!!

Number Two

Number One