Review: The Originals: The Rise
The Originals: The Rise by Julie Plec
My rating: [rating=1]
Blurb:
Family is power. The Original vampire family swore it to each other a thousand years ago. They pledged to remain together always and forever. But even when you’re immortal, promises are hard to keep.
Arriving in New Orleans in 1722, Original vampire siblings Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah Mikaelson believe they’ve escaped their dangerous past. But the city is lawless, a haven for witches and werewolves unwilling to share territory. The siblings are at their mercy…especially after Klaus meets the beautiful and mysterious Vivianne. Her impending marriage is key to ending the war between the supernatural factions and Klaus’s attraction to her could destroy the uneasy alliance. As Elijah works toward securing a piece of the city for his family, and Rebekah fights her unexpected feelings for a French captain, will Klaus’s volatile desires bring their world crashing down and tear them apart for good?
Review:
(I got a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)
I have only watched a few episodes from the TV show, so I’m far from being an expert on the Mikaelson siblings and the kind of plots they get into in episodes. However, I’m not sure at all I found them here, nor that they were really interesting at all, in a more generic way. I kept thinking that they were, well, out of character—which was baffling, since I was under the impression that the people who worked on this novel were also those who worked on the series?
There was a lot of love in there, and of the insta-love, not very impressive kind. Rebekah, why not, as the series very early on showed that she was quick to develop interest for human guys. But in many other ways, she was so far from the badass girl I saw on screen. Neither could I find ruthless Klaus in the love-smitten dullard that ambled through the novel most of the time—and his reaction regarding Rebekah’s love interest was way too removed from what I would have expected (TV!Niklaus would never have had such a mellow reaction, let her do as she pleased so easily). Elijah was closest to his character, I think, with his desire and efforts to build a home for his family, and thus keep the latter together. I must not be the right audience for so much romance, especially when involving immortals, who I wouldn’t expect to develop feelings so quickly.
Mostly Elijah’s plot seemed to be the main one, with his siblings’ antics supposed to help (Rebekah recruiting an army) yet not helping much in the end, or just consisting in wooing a girl—at least the not-caring-about-what-others-do was somewhat Klaus-like, but that was all. (Also, why they absolutely had to remain in New Orleans, where they weren’t welcome, was a bit puzzling. But I guess finding another city would’ve demanded long days or weeks of travel, uncertainty as to what they’d find there, and having to delay finding a home at last… So, well, I could live with that.)
Speaking of plots and ways of moving it forward, I would also have expected vampires to be more cunning, more prepared. As mentioned at the beginning of my review, I haven’t watched many episodes; yet I remember Klaus’s plan regarding how to undermine Marcel’s influence, and… there wasn’t much of that here. These vampires seemed too naive, too easily surprised by other characters or events, too vulnerable, compared to the “Originals” I had been led to expect. This doesn’t fit with my idea of immortals.
In the end, my feelings about this book were mostly annoyance and boredom, and I couldn’t care less about what would happen to its characters (including the secondary ones, whose fates were so easy to guess anyway). I’ll stick to the TV series.