Title: The Fury (The Vampire Diaries 3)
Author: L.J. Smith
Year: 2007 omnibus (original 1991)
Publisher: Harper Teen
Reviewer:  Andrew Clough

MITSFS meetings are wonderful things.  They are fun, have lots of cool
people, lots of tasty bananas, and help keep us all informed about the
state of the library and what's happening in it.  They do come with a
danger though, the danger of leading you into making a suggestion of
something that ought to be done.  Because invariably such a suggestion
will be met with the observation that "yes, that would be nice" and
"why don't you do it yourself?"

In that way, having pointed out that it would be hilarious if someone
were to write a really snarky review of one of the many new vampire
romance books plaguing our library I was appointed to be the one who
would have to wade though the particular tome in question and come up
with snarky things to say about it.  I'm sorry to say that I wasn't
able to finish the first task, but at least I've made an attempt at
the second.

The Vampire Diaries is a four part series of books following the
transformation and adventures of a young woman named Elena.  MITSFS
was recently given an omnibus of the later two novels to review, and
so it was half way through that I started reading.  Not to worry
though, I'm an expert at these things and after having read one book
from The Wheel of Time out of order I was confident that I would
somehow manage to figure out what was going on.  I needn't have
worried.

You see Elena, our heroine, is in trouble.  She's been turned into a
vampire.  Even worse, there are two strikingly handsome, dark, and
dangerous vampire brothers who are fighting over her.  She also finds
that she needs to suck the blood from her handsome, safe, high-school
boyfriend in order to survive.  Oh, and there are some hints of an
actual big bad antagonist out there too.

All of this your humble reviewer was able to absorb and keep going,
but this last is what forced me to put the book down.  Because the
townsfolk all think she died they hold a funeral for her.  At it all
of the teachers who didn't approve of her, all of the fellow students
who she felt alienated from, everyone talks about how she was really
an excellent person who made their lives better and who they'll miss
dearly.

Now, these aren't horribly unrealistic things to be said at a funeral
and any literary device used by the likes of Mark Twain must somehow
pick up a bit of class just by the association.  At the same time I
found I couldn't go on after that.  The book was just too
transparently a wish fulfillment fantasy and a wish fulfillment
fantasy for a person very different than me.  I felt odd to be reading
it, and in my bleary weakness I was no longer able to continue reading
it. It wasn't that I found it bad so much as I resented the things the
book threw at me expecting me to find them good.

If you're an alienated high-school girl who doesn't realize or who
doesn't care when you're being pandered to you'll probably enjoy The
Vampire Diaries.  Everybody else should stay clear.