Killing Me Slowly

I have to start by saying I absolutely worshiped her when I was growing up, cause, y'know, 13-year-old author, wrote about vampires, etc, etc. Her fictional world shaped mine as a child, and still kind of does, to some extent. Anyway, that being said, Persistence of Memory was kind of disappointing.

I mean, the premise was promising - a girl who all her life has believed that she is schizophrenic and has a violent alternate personality named Shevaun, comes to find out that her alter is in actuality a real person vampire who occasionally inhabits her brain. It's a very unique way to approach the usual human-gets-introduced-to-supernatural-world plot point.

And I liked that her illness was taken seriously and dealt with (as far as I can tell) realistically by the character and the author. You can see that Amy did her research, or maybe she knew someone with similar problems. I believed it, anyway.

Still, there were issues. I mean, coming on the heels of the massive world-building she did in the unique and immersive (if overly edited) Kiesha'ra, the setting and situations in this story come off a little bland and boring. We're back to plain old vampires and plain old humans, and while there are shapeshifter and witch characters in this book, it feels...less imaginative. The only bit of interesting mythology we get in Persistence of Memory deals with the Triste witches (basically immortal psychic vampires with magic powers), and most of that you can learn from her website, blog, and message board, which I happened to spend my early teen years living on.

I suppose all that is forgivable, since the point here is the story and characters, not the world. But...well, the characters aren't that great either. Erin is boring, basically the same heroine Amy has in all of her books - an attractive, sarcastic loner. Even her mental health issues don't affect her personality enough to make her interesting, or even all that different.

Her alter's lover, Adjila, suffers from the same problem. You could call him Zane or Jaguar or Nikolas or Christopher, or hell, even Aubrey, and never know it should have been different...

Read more at You're Killing.Us.