 |
|
Title: The PHANTOM (LAST VAMPIRE 4)
ISBN: 0671550306
Author:
Christopher Pike
Publicate Date: 1996-05-01
Publish: 1996-05-01
List Price: $4.99
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Mass Market Paperback
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $33.08
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.49
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: The Best One!!!
This, in my opinion is the best one of the series, because the plot stands apart from the rest. It is interesting to watch her daughter grow and interact with society... wondreing what she might be or do. Her character is a little scary. Although this series is my fav, and all of them are outstanding, this would be my favorite.
|
2: Necessarily complicated.
I read this book and all his others when I was growing up, probably beginning around age eleven. And that was also around the time I began writing my own stories, which until recently have been pretty strictly literary fiction. I went to college, then grad school at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and now have an MFA in fiction and am making a tentative living off my writing. But lately I've found myself turning inward, and I've thought about Mr. Pike's books a lot in the past months, possibily because I've decided to write about what interests me, rather than writing what I've been taught is "good". That may seem obvious, but for me at least, it has been difficult to distinguish the difference, because above all else, I'm interested in finely crafted stories, stories that mean something, that cannot be deflated with the pinprick of logic, etc. Which brings me to my point. I found in a storage building a big box of Pike's books and took them to my house and have begun reading them again. They have stood the tests of time and education in most ways.
Yes, they are "young adult" books, if that matters, but they are also smart in a way not much I've read is, and I've read a lot. More than that, they are wise -- a strange thing to say about books for teens, but that wisdom comes across not as a "lesson" but as an essential truth, something so obvious you can't believe you never thought of it. And also, as I re-read, I realized that a huge part of my worldview had somehow been shaped by these books. Now, that's not to say I haven't changed my mind or worked through things in different ways, but just that revelation -- that I read these and they stuck -- speaks volumes for them in my mind, because I know how much I've read that hasn't stuck. Perhaps it's the undercurrent of Eastern philosphy, the paradoxical dualism he presents in nearly every story. Because in Pike's world, the situation often (at least at the outset) seems to be one of good versus bad, just like most children's stories. But this is soon shattered by the complicated truth that situations and people aren't usually good "versus" bad. It's that the good IS the bad, and the bad is the good, which cancels them both out and thus we see grey -- an important thing, I think, for teenagers to be able to understand and carry with them into adulthood.
In this book, Sita's daughter may be evil, or she may be something else entirely, something almost approaching transcendent. What is the functional difference? Normal humans can truly understand neither. Sita has to kill for this daughter, and what of the innocent people she sacrifices? Is it terrible they should die? Especially if it's for a higher purpose? Difficult questions that Pike does not answer, but which seem more than relevent in today's charged atmosphere, when we won't or can't understand our "enemies" in a war fought in the name of God on both sides. Thus, a story about paradoxes and dualistic natures (expecially one also dealing with violence) might not be so bad for teenagers today.
|
3: Ok
I read the first three books before I read this one, so I understood everything that was going on. Towards the end though, the book got really confusing. This book also wasn't as good as the first three because I think there was a lot of unnecessary things added to the story that made it somewhat boring at times. But overall the book was ok.
|
4: ~da best~
absolutely da best!!!!!! this is probably the best book in the series and it will touch ur heart.... seriously... man this is good!~~!
|
5: I felt this was the downfall of the series
I stated in a review of one of the other books that the books, in my opinion, got dumber with each one. This I feel is the downfall of the series. Its interesting in a sense, yet not entirely. The only kicker I find to this book (that prevented me from giving it 2 stars) was the ending when it is revealed what the child is.
|
|
|
|
|
