Thirst No. 3: The Eternal Dawn
Author: Christopher Pike
Release Date: October 2010
The third volume of Christopher Pike’s “Thirst” series picks up where “The Last Vampire 6” left off, complete with a several year time jump to coincide with the real world time lapse between the two novels. **Major spoilers for the earlier books in the series follow** The Last Vampire series concluded with our hero protagonist being returned to her human life with an opportunity to live it out with her husband and child and never become a vampire, undoing all of the stories of six novels and being revealed to be a book series by her faithful friend Seymour who was never cured by her blood and still battling HIV while finishing up her story.
I wondered how Pike would be able to continue this story while being faithful to those original books, and while he provides an explanation it inevitably cheapens the ending of the original series. The overall feel of this book was a bit like “American Reunion” or “The Veronica Mars Movie” as all of the major players and concepts from “The Last Vampire” series return to the fold with an update to where they are today, which provides some nice fan service but also makes the book feel contrived (with even Alisa pointing out all of the coincidences). The other original vampire, Yaksha, is even revisited with new developments that change everything you thought you knew about him (written like a movie tag line on purpose).
It’s difficult to rate a book like this, because the author was trying to relaunch a book series, continue a dead one, and tell an original vampire story all at once. As for launching a new series, the book has so much continuity that it tries to address that I don’t think somebody could enjoy it without reading the prior books (which is why the published and/or Pike correctly decided to release it as a Volume 3). The originality of the story was OK, with several new villains and allies popping up that kept the science fiction elements of Pike’s writing ever present. As a continuation of the series, however much I enjoyed checking up on the characters from years earlier, undoing the ending of the prior series cheapened the total story of Alisa overall.
- 3 Barrels
- Book Series
