'Redeemed' by PC & Kristin Cast

In the final electrifying novel in the HoN series, Neferet has finally made herself known to mortals. A Dark Goddess is loose on Tulsa and the world. No single vampyre is strong enough to vanquish her - unless that creature has the power to summon the elements as well as the ability to wield Old Magick. Only Zoey Redbird is heir to such power…but because of the consequences of using Old Magick, she is unable to help. Find out who will win and who will lose in this epic battle of Light versus Darkness.

Something happens to you when you read a good book that only readers will understand. When you reach that very last page, the last sentence, the last word, and you feel your heart break because you know it’s over. You have to say goodbye to a world you have grown to, not necessarily love but grown attached to. This can happen to you after reading one good book. So after seven years, twelve books and four novellas, having just finished Redeemed at 2:43am and having to face the last page of the series, I somehow don’t feel the usual loss I do when finishing a good book. Instead, I feel elated.


In Year Seven I began reading Marked after seeing a poster for Betrayed on my English classroom wall at school. It was perhaps a little too mature for eleven year old me but the series had me gripped from the very beginning. In Year Eight my English teacher, Mr McGraph, caught my friend and I reading Betrayed behind a copy of the class text at, shall we say, was a rather compromising scene. But of course he could not say anything for the poster was on the classroom wall! Seven years later and I am still recommending the series to my friends, holding these fond memories close even after leaving school.


House of Night welcomed me to a whole new world when I was new to YA books. It was the step I took from reading Enid Blyton and Jacqueline Wilson to more mature books. The saying ‘A reader lives a thousand lives. A man who never reads lives but one’ is one I believe so strongly in, and House of Night has allowed me to follow, grow, live and die with the lives of some of my all-time favourite characters. With a series as long as House of Night it is not hard to grow attached to characters. Zoe, the Nerd Herd, friends and foe, are a family that I have grown beside, learnt from and made friends because of and for that I will eternally be grateful to PC and Kristin Cast.


To say I was apprehensive about starting Redeemed would be a huge understatement. I had taken advantage of having the series in my life for so long that an end was something I had never really thought of. But holding it in my hands and knowing that this was it, I was putting seven years of my life in the hands of the authors to do what they wished with and it really is a scary feeling. But from the very start they did not disappoint.


I am not a lover of multi-perspectives in a book but I have learned to endure them in the case of House of Night as they do greatly add to the storyline. At the start would have liked more of Zoey and the Nerd Herd, mostly because it was the last book and I didn’t want to lose a moment with them, but as the story moved on I found myself looking forward to the different characters sections. For those of you who are familiar with the House of Night series, do not threat, I am not going to spoil anything for you. The story continues on from where Revealed leaves off which I hugely appreciate. There are losses within the book, some of which will have you sobbing like a baby if you are anything like me, but something that I adore about PC and Kristin Casts creation is that everything that happens has a light side to them and so the deaths are eased for us as they are for the characters in the books.


A review is hard to right without spoilers for a twelve book series but I am assuming if you are reading this review you would have read the previous eleven novels but here is your warning.
SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD (but no Redeemed spoilers, do not threat).


One of the major things I did not like which the authors did in the series was kill off a Heath. He is my single most favourite character in the world of YA. I love everything about him. He is one of the strongest characters in the entire series. Okay, so I will give a bet that a lot of you think I have gone crazy by this. You’re probably all crazy Team Stark fans too, but hear me out. Heath never gives up. He stays loyal to Zoey, to light and to his beliefs, but, more importantly, himself. He never questions what he believes, he never doubts that his love will survive. Heath battles darkness and evil and creatures of nightmare. Heath is human. He brings out a side of Zoey that she so quickly could have lost after being marked and keeps her humanity in a world that is full of, in Z’s words, bullpoopie. So, yes I love Stark and I even love Erick, but Heath is someone I want in my life and feel honoured have just read about. You’re probably wondering why I’ve brought Heath up in the middle of my Redeemed review now. Well, of you have read the previous books you will know Heaths sould was put in the body of Aurox where Zoey often finds herself feeling conflicting feelings for the part of Heath she sees within him. PC and Krisitn do not disappoint when it comes to the outcome of the foursome. I feel that the way they moved the characters through the debates and the resolutions made towards the situation suit the story, and the results are one that I personally feel is the only way it could have ended.


But still, I miss Heath. Just saying.


This review is short because there is not much to say except read it because these feelings are ones that cannot be written in a review but ones that you just have to experience for yourself. Book twelve gives you a perfect ending to a breathtakingly beautiful series.


House of Night is an incredible and grately underrated YA fantasy series which I plead with everybody to read. Yes, it is a long series and okay, fantasy may not be your thing, but I promise that you will full in love with each and every single character as much as I have- the world will grip you and the deaths will break you but at the end you will be a better person for it all. Whether PC and Kristin Cast intended this or not, the series has taught me a lot about life and growing up because through the battles and evil, the magick and the religions, at the end of it all, the series is about love and friendship. Through the battles we face, light can triumph no matter who we are, our beliefs or our backgrounds. People can change and second chances can mean everything.


I want to take this opportunity to thank PC and Kristin Cast for House of Night. For Zoey and Stevie Rae’s friendship. For Heath. For brown pop and Count Chocula. For bird boys and bull boys. For the Nerd Herd and Nyla. For Stark and his arrows. For each and every character. For the hot scenes and the bloody scenes. For warriors oaths and for Nyx. For every single second of vampyre goodness you have given us, House of a Night will always sit proudly on my bookshelf.


Merry meet, merry part and merry meet again.