The most boring part of any vampire-hunting expedition is probably the hunt for the vampires' coffins -- and that's the main focus of "Vampire Kisses 3: Vampireville." Aside from reminding us that her self-insert is GOTH GOTH GOTH every paragraph or so, Ellen Schreiber continues to spin up a plotless supernatural soap opera that never manages to grow a plot. Instead we've got vampiric catfights and Raven stalking her nemesis.
The vampire twins Luna and Jagger are still hanging around Dullsville, and apparently have dark and deadly designs for the much-despised Trevor. For some reason, Alexander and Raven have a problem with this and set out to stop them -- so when they aren't fawning on each other (and Alexander isn't wangsting about waaaaaaa he's a vampire), they're searching for evidence of Luna and Jagger's hiding places.
In the meantime, Raven is stalking Trevor to make sure he hasn't already been turned into a vampire, while getting jealous that he's enamored of the new goth chick in town. But finding the hiding places of the twins (in a pretty random location) is only the beginning of the conflict -- Raven soon becomes galpals with Luna, but there's still a devious plan in place to snag Trevor.
Ellen Schreiber's third novel left me with one major question: where's the plot? Thus far it seems to be primarily immature teen vampires and obnoxious human teens dating, smooching and whining about how The World Doesn't Understand Them. It's a bit like the worst teen dramas of the CW, but with more mall-goth trappings (Count Chocula as a "goth cereal"?! "Nightmare Before Christmas" alarm clocks?!) and immortal wangst.
Most of the story is devoted to Alexander and Raven meandering aimlessly around, poking in corners and failing to figure out where Jagger and Luna are. When they do find out... nothing really happens. There's no real feeling of urgency, since whenever Raven finds out some vital and urgent piece of info, she and Alexander have a leisurely dinner date and eventually get around to doing something ineffectual. It feels like Schreiber was diddling around randomly to fill out a page quota.
And her prose continues to be an utter embarrassment -- readers are informed every other sentence that Raven is GOTH GOTH GOTH and everything she does has to be connected to vampires, "edgy" things or the color black. And her dialogue is painfully silly, especially when she characters try to be romanic ("Alexander's so dreamy. His eyes are like milk chocolates").
And the characters continue to be flat as boards -- Raven's drippy fascination with Alexander seems to be less about his personality, and more about him being a male-vampire doppelganger of herself. She's a snotty, self-absorbed brat who bumbles around doing one dumb thing after another. Jagger remains a 2-D villain/stalker who is as menacing as a blob of oatmeal, and his sister loses any cool factor once it's revealed that she's basically a vampiric Raven. Waaa waaa, I'm such an outsider and I hate my little brother, boohoo.
"Vampire Kisses 3: Vampireville" continues Ellen Schreiber's pitch-black losing streak -- appalling characters, poor writing, and only the barest shadow of a plot. This book lacks any bite.
