Review: THE VAN ALEN LEGACY by MELISSA DE LA CRUZ

The Van Alen Legacy (Blue Bloods #4) by Melissa de la Cruz

Buy It Now: via Amazon.com

Description: With the stunning revelation surrounding Bliss’s true identity comes the growing threat of the sinister Silver Bloods. Once left to live the glamorous life in New York City, the Blue Bloods now find themselves in an epic battle for survival. Not to worry, love is still in the air for the young vampires of the Upper East Side. Or is it? Jack and Schuyler are over. Oliver’s brokenhearted. And only the cunning Mimi seems to be happily engaged. from Amazon.com product description

Stacy’s Review:

The fourth book in the “Blue Bloods” series by Melissa de la Cruz is the book that the other three have been working up to – not just in terms of plot, but in terms of character development, pacing, and the author’s comfort with her world (I have noticed that the writing is smoother, the backstory richer with each volume). No longer is every little aspect of the Blue Blood culture and history explained – by this point if you’ve been paying attention, you know all the pertinent details. To new readers, this is a series I would highly recommend within the YA Supernatural genre. It combines the cutthroat richie teen culture of Gossip Girl (remember they were books first too?) with the epic good vs. evil in the hands of children of Harry Potter. The vampire aspect seems almost an afterthought – it is the angels of Heaven and Hell that really hold the spotlight. Instead of mostly-human decendents of angels like in Cassandra Clare’s “Mortal Instruments”, here they ARE the angels – reincarnated in life after life, living without true knowledge of themselves and their previous existences until they reach the age of majority at fifteen. The fight between Light and Dark rages on, but they had thought it settled with the collapse of Rome. Instead, we are drawn into American history with the disappearance of Roanoke – and the mysterious word left at the site of the abandoned colony: “Croatan”. This word, in de la Cruz’s novels, is the old word for the enemy of the Blue Bloods – Silver Blood (which is actually a Blue Blood who fed on other Blue Bloods – a type of cannibal who has been corrupted by Lucifer). The Blue Bloods amidst the early settlers coming off the Mayflower did not want to acknowledge that their enemy was not dead, and until now have been ignoring it pretty damn well. Enter Duchesne, the private school in NYC where many of our young Blue Bloods attend high school.

At this point in the series (new readers, beware of SPOILERS – de la Cruz doesn’t waste pages on recaps and jumps right into the new action), the deaths of many of the Conclave, including those who have been revealed as defectors to the Dark Prince (that would be Lucifer and his vessel, whom I really love and keep hoping for a miracle there) have left a vacuum in the power structure. Two characters I have been suspicious of since they appeared step up and have burrowed into my favor with their banter and faux-evil (selfish yes, evil, well, not so much) mischief that has matured into actual Get It Done responsibility – Mimi Force and Kingsley Martin. I started to feel actual pity for Mimi in Masquerade because she was clearly deluding herself with regards her “brother” Jack; he slowly loses my respect as he is revealed to be deeply emotionally troubled. Her sad maturity as she admits that he always comes back to her echoes that of an often cheated-on spouse in Revelation. Jack reminds me of Brutus of Sara Douglass’s “Troy Game” series (who is, coincidentally, called “Jack” in one of his incarnations as well – the last one) – and I don’t see a happy ending coming for him. In every incarnation, he buries himself in his own life with his sister (Death and Destruction hand and hand), but is often distracted by his quest to be loved by one of the Light – first Allegra/Gabrielle and then Schuyler. Mimi defends him at every turn, but I kept hoping that she would come to her senses this time, during this war, and understand that the bond they have shared for millenia is something she must rise above. I wanted more from Mimi in this life; even as I brushed her off as annoying but somehow necessary in previous volumes, this time I wanted growth. She’s weeviled her way into me, and now I have expectations of her. So far, she’s meeting them, and I think she’s fighting her way to be Queen Bee on my list of favorite characters. She surprised me so much in this volume, I didn’t know what my emotions were telling me. A character who has been passed off (at least, in my mind) as a stuck-up miserable archetype of silly rich girl with potentially evil agenda has matured into one who is extremely cognizant of the trouble her race is facing and her role in their salvation. She doesn’t lose her unique “Mimi”ness however: walking into slums as as investigative agent wearing stiletto boots, which she regrettably chops the heels off of is a particularly enjoyable moment. The story is told in three distinct character POVs, a change from previous novels – giving us not just the ephemera of Schuyler Van Alen, but actual information Schuyler is not privy to. Unraveling the storyline from Mimi, Schuyler, and Bliss’s points of view lent itself to the plot thickening like good gravy, and I got more of everything I wanted plus, clearly, things I did not expect and loved anyway.

Which brings me to my dilemma. De la Cruz has a lot of story to tell, but she doesn’t use her words. Large portions of events are skipped, and in many cases, they are merely revealed later as they become pertinent in an offhand manner. However, here more than ever before, I wish that de la Cruz would’ve increased her word count a bit and give us all that “detritus” that exists out there. She has a deep narrative history that she seems to merely skim off the top to write down, and other events that happened that she didn’t tell us about are referred to in one or two lines in passing. Those one or two lines could have been entire paragraphs or chapters that I would have liked to read, and I don’t think it would have had a detrimental effect on her pacing, which is fast and furious to say the least. My affection for her story battles with my desire for her to really tell us a rich story instead of giving us the Reader’s Digest version – I do not feel length of a manuscript is mutually exclusive with the YA genre. She loses half a star because by this time, I had hoped she would do less skimming over and more delving into her characters and letting them develop rather than saying, in retrospect, that these events had happened, this person is now like this, and it’s okay now that things are this way. So for plot, she’s still keeping me, and ordinarily I would have given it four full stars, but my expectation has dropped the rating. I still really enjoyed the book, and will definitely continue to the next one, but I would rather have to wait longer for a longer manuscript than only six to eight months for a manuscript that I finish in less than three hours.