#44. Weekend. Christopher Pike. Young Adult Fiction. 2.5 Stars

#45. Whisper of Death. Christopher Pike. Young Adult Fiction. 3.5 Stars

#46. Chain Letter. Christopher Pike. Young Adult Fiction. 2.5 Stars

#47. Chain Letter 2. Christopher Pike. Young Adult Fiction. 1.5 Stars

*Again, if you want to know what is compelling a 31 year old to have a Christopher Pike fest, read more here.

Okay, first and foremost, let us discuss Christopher Pike’s obsession with class valedictorians.

I read seven of his books in the last five days and every single solitary book featured as one of the main characters the high school valedictorian (or the “likely class valedictorian”). Also of note, is that these were always men. Shame on you Mr. Pike…not one female class valedictorian? And even when there was someone else competing for valedictorian that might take it from one of our main characters…as in the Final Friends Trilogy (Michael Olson vs. Dale Jensen) even that wasn’t ever a woman. I guess all the women were too busy being pretty to be class valedictorian. Oh, I’m sorry, are my claws showing? It must be the bitterness rubbing off after reading 1,467 pages of Young Adult Fiction. My brain is melting…mostly from having to read about too many girls in tight white shorts or tight white pants with a brightly colored blouse. *Sigh*.

Sidenote: He also seems to have an unhealthy obsession with the name Michael, at least three characters in his books have been named Michael – including hero Michael Olson in the Final Friends Trilogy, hero Flynn aka Michael Ryan Richardson in Weekend, and Mike from Bury Me Deep (which I did not read recently, but remember now in all my Pike-like memory recoveries). Perhaps Pike’s real name is Michael? Hmmm…food for thought. Is it really that simple? Pike’s name is Mike and he was or wished he was class valedictorian? Have we really pierced into the very soul of this 1980’s and 90’s prolific tween writer? It cannot be so simple…onto the reviews…!

I still hold that these books hold up surprisingly well over time plot wise, and the writing isn’t horrendous or anything, I certainly couldn’t have gotten through 1,467 pages of it if it was really that bad, but I did notice some of it really beginning to affect me in a negative way as I read along.

It’s also interesting to note that while Pike’s plots were pretty complicated and well hidden, I can’t imagine as a kid first reading these to not feeling a bit ripped off, was I really so dense that I did not catch on to his tedious formula? For Pike’s 1986 – 1990 work he was pretty much just dealing with teenagers and some “mysterious death or accident”, usually this “event” is perceived as an innocent accident, and by the end of the book (or trilogy in the case of Final Friends) you are basically left with a character in a room figuring it out and forcing everyone involved to come clean…in fact Law & Order’s Criminal Intent Character Detective Goren might have stolen his technique from carefully researching Pike books since that is the end of basically every Criminal Intent episode…do I smell a lawsuit? Anyway, by 1990 it seems Pike was running out of interesting ways to get teens to confess at the end of his novels, or perhaps he suspected that people were catching on to his formula and so he turned to the supernatural.

Whisper of Death, despite the horrible title (and even worse cover) was not bad, and I believe was one of his first “supernatural” focused books, published in 1991. It’s actually a pretty creative plot in which five teenagers, end up alone in the world. Handsome Pepper, attractive pretty legged Roxanne, chubby potential valedictorian Stan, big scary and apparently acne-faced Helter, and knockout future model/ porn star Leslie are the only ones left in their town and apparently in the world. It is the wrongs they have committed against a red-headed teenage witch they know that committed suicide a month ago named Betty Sue that has brought them into this purgatory in which they are killed off one by one in the same manner as Betty Sue wrote they would be in short stories that the doomed characters find in the dead town. Whisper gets major props for being WAY off the map from Pike’s other works in taking risks. By page 22 Roxanne and Pepper are aborting their love child, although Roxanne thinks she has stopped the procedure in time (has she???). Pike also kills off all his characters in this book in horrible ways, it is a decidedly risky move and one that pays off in some ways. This is by far the darkest of his early works that I read and one I remember sticking with me as a kid, I think this was a smart book for him to do, however he botches it by not giving you a chance to care about any of the characters…the very thing that make Final Friends work so well, even without the creative plot twists present here. It is the books downfall that you don’t really care when any of these characters bite the dust, even Roxanne the main character. In fact, the only truly good character was Stan…and you can’t figure out why he’s getting thrown into purgatory with the rest of the jerks, so it’s a bit unfulfilling.

Chain Letter 2: The Ancient Evil (ugh, can you believe that title? only the cover is worse than the title) was the only other book I read in the past week that would fit in with Pike’s “supernatural works”, I don’t remember liking many of his supernatural books when I was a kid, which is odd, cause I like me some good supernatural stuff. Anyway, I remember disliking Chain Letter 2 intensely as a kid, and I only purchased it along with the rest because I knew I intended to read Chain Letter and would instantly be curious about how the hell he made a supernatural sequel to a pretty good first book some six years later (boy do I know myself, I’d finished Chain Letter for all of 20 seconds when I went digging for part two).

Chain Letter held up pretty damn well, despite the hokey-ness of the idea of a chain letter driving a book forward and it was pretty interesting to follow super thin neurotic but attractive Fran, gorgeous lithe blonde actress Brenda, gorgeous raven haired actress Alison, badass superhot female amazon Joan, burning hunk of man-meat athlete Tony, big nosed future valedictorian Kipp, and slight sweet innocent Neil as they receive a horrible chain letter threatening them to do as requested or they will be punished (or their crime of the previous summer – hitting a possibly already dead man with their car – shades of I Know What You Did Last Summer – will be revealed).  The pace moves well and the characters are interesting enough, there is also a traditional killer chases girl scene towards the end set in an abandoned housing track that had my heart moving pretty fast and must have had my little 12 year old head under the covers for a week the first time I read it.  Like most his books, the ending is a bit disappointing…all is resolved largely as a huge misunderstanding that is solved with “love and…understanding, of course” but at least it made sense.

Chain Letter 2…ugh. I don’t know what he was thinking. It had none of the drama of the first book, largely because he tries to squeeze in explanations of how the first book really was supernatural with all this exposition about all the stuff they didn’t reveal in the first book. It is not well done in the least and it is a perfect example of how show don’t tell should be used in books. Rather than having the characters do anything or discover anything, they just sit there while other new characters explain old plot developments to them. Pike proves he’s not afraid to kill his cast, but as a reader you already know that if you’ve read his newer work, and so the power of it is less intense.  It was really quite bad.

Weekend held up pretty well and I believe is one of his first books, published in 1986. This was also before he went over to the supernatural side, although I should mention that there are always elements of that in his books, even the early ones…but in the early books they are usually red herrings. In Weekend we have, as tradition dictates, an “accident” to a beautiful young teen full of promise (Robin)…in this case she’s not dead, but slowly dying and the teens/friends that were with her at the time of said accident – her beautiful buxom fiery red-headed slutty though likable adopted sister Lena, cute but annoying and weak Kerry, gorgeous slightly ditzy blonde Angie, gorgeous intelligent sweet perfect dark haired Shani, beautiful mysterious foreign Flynn, good natured athlete Bert, ruggedly handsome bad boy Sol, and strangely attractive future valedictorian Park as they are trapped at a beach house in Mexico as one of them (or two??) try to find out who is responsible for Robin’s accident.  The ending, as always, is a bit convenient, but unlike Chain Letter 2, Pike does a pretty great job of letting the story unfold rather than just dictating it to us and taking away all the suspense. The characters are about as likable and unlikable as always and as always, the women are gorgeous in their tight white shorts and colored blouses, although I found the protagonist Shani to be a bit weak and poorly developed compared to some of Pike’s other female protagonists.

Okay, that’s it for the YA books and review (thank the heavens I’m sure some of you are saying). It was enjoyable, but I have to say, I’m pretty off the idea of YA books. When the idea struck me to read these I thought “hey…I could do this…maybe I’ll just bang a couple crap teen books out be able to quit my job and still work on my great American novel on the side…” but it’s hard enough to write a book you love and feel proud of and to get someone else to love it and publish it, that it’s a waste of time writing something you think is crap from go…so I’ll be passing on that…for now.

Update: A brief bio I found on Pike reveals his real name to be…Kevin…not Mike. So disappointing…