"Luna's Dream" is the first installment in "Soulstice," a new vampire book series written by Lance Dow and Keana Texeira. Written for young teens, the book is the story of Luna Tremaine, a 15-year-old vampire. Tremaine and her BFF, Lily Burgoyne, attend school together and face the normal high school challenges of finding their own identities while trying to fit in, dealing with the "cool clique," and of course, managing their all-consuming thoughts of the opposite sex. Themes are expected: the cheerleaders are beautiful, cool, and mean; the cute football hero is secretly shy and smart; and the book's heroine is an outsider who relies on the wisdom of an unrelated mentor to advise her.
The central conflict, of course, is that Luna is a vampire. And worse for her, she is in love with a human boy, which is simply "not done" in Luna's vampire world. In addition, there is a group of "Killer Bees" who are particularly cruel vampires who are targeting her true love. Once attacked by the Killer Bees, no human can survive.
There are some interesting differences between this book and other vampire literature. Luna is a mortal vampire who also expresses Christian beliefs about God. This might make "Soulstice" more appealing to parents who found other vampire books too pagan or darkly supernatural. The text is also relatively clean, with only mild swearing and nothing sexually inappropriate for the age of the audience.
There is quite a bit of dialog with pop culture references and slang, such as "fo' sho'," "OMG," and "freakin'" (spelled "freaken" in the text). This book will appeal to certain audiences and definitely not appeal to others.
Luna's Dream is set for release to bookstores on May 31. The book is already slated for a movie release in 2011. Dow is a screenwriter and Texeira is a 15-year-old model and recording artist. Check out www.whosluna.com for more.
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