Thirst No. 3: The Eternal Dawn By: Christopher Pike (Book Review)

 ***There will be spoilers within this review***

Summary:

Alisa has spent the past five thousand years as a vampire, living alone and fighting for survival. In her loneliness, Alisa cannot resist bringing Teri; a descendant of her human family, into her life. But Alisa is surrounded by death and destructions, and just by knowing Alisa, Teri's life is at risk. Alisa's guilt grows when she becomes involved in a dangerous conspiracy. A covert organization knows Alisa's secret and will stop at nothing to use her powers to for their cause. As Alisa desperately tries to protect herself and Teri from the unknown enemy, she discovers a force more powerful and more lethal than anything she has ever seen. Alisa doesn't know who to trust, who to challent, or who she will become. 

You would think that the way that Thirst No. 2 ended that there wouldn't be more to Sita/Alisa's story but apparently that's not the case. So imagine my surprise when the thirst book starts with Sita very much alive and kicking. Or more like killing a serial rapist. It's so easy to get lost into the story because Pike is such a phenomenal writer but my god! It took over 200 pages to finally find out how and why Sita was still alive. So the reason why she is still alive is because she never went back in time to kill Yaksha and thus changing her future. Essentially, it was Seymour's ending but never Sita's. They never met till she caught up to him in New York. Book 2 ended with Seymour still being sick with Aids and that he finished Sita's story/ book that he was writing about her. But he was never apart of her life. They ended up having a psychic link that allowed him to see parts of her life. She mentioned that it was possible his story of her life is actually true in another universe. Which I feel Pike put it in there in case he ever makes a mistake he can say it was another universe but not part of the main 'storyline'. I completely hate that the beautiful ending we had for Sita in book 2 was destroyed by Pike coming up with this stupid way of re-surrecting her. 

What I would have done differently is have Sita go back in the past as a ghostly figure to see the result of her killing Yaksha and how it impacted five thousand years of history. Definitely, have Krishna there beside her showing the consequences of her actions and all of those who would have died if she hadn't been there to save them such as; Seymour, John, Paula etc. Krishna tells Sita that no matter what she choses she will still have his grace and at the last second she decides to keep her past the same and change nothing. Boom! It's intense, moving and keeps the possibility of having another book to continue her story without that weird little mishap with the whole Seymour writing her story. 

In book 3, Sita inserts herself into Teri's life, a descendent of Sita's human family. All in the same day she meets Teri and her boyfriend Matt, finds out about IIC which is a company obtaining a vast amount of money in a short amount of time and gets attacked by a Telar; a hard to kill 'species' that has advanced technology and is older than Sita. I put in the species part just because we still don't know how Telars came to be and quote frankly neither do they. 

All in all, this was a crazy book filled with lots of action, discovery and a lot of violence. Pretty much the norm when it comes to Sita's story. I've always been curious when it came to Yaksha just because we didn't really get to find out what he did for five thousand years other than knowing he tried to kill all the remaining vampires that were alive. We find out that he knew about the Telar and the secret in destroying them. He ended up marrying the oldest living Telar and having a child with her. Half-Telar half-vampire hybrid who we find out was Matt all along! I had a feeling that he would become a very important character just because he has this magnitizism about him and that Sita was never able to read his mind. 

We don't know much about the Telar but we do know that they are apart of every important governmental organization and that they have a virus/toxin to release into the public for population control to improve the environment and the planet. Population control has been an on-going debate for many decades and many agree that we are over populating the Earth at an alarming rate. We're breeding too quickly and there is a fear that we'll run out of resources pretty soon. During Covid-19, we have seen improvements in the environment and a decrease in air pollution with everyone being on lockdown. I've been working from home since March and there doesn't seem to be any signs of me working back in the office. If there is one thing to take away from the lockdown is that we can make a difference and a positive impact on the environment if we can continue with some form of lockdown. I'm not for killing millions of people for the sake of population control but there needs to be changes.The last thing I want to do is go to Mars to survive. 

The Telar have an enemy which is IIC and IIC's main weapon is the Array. A form of mind control that can make the controlee do whatever they want them to do. Thus far, it seems that Sita was the only one to ever break out of that psychic trance but she needed the help of Shanti which we still don't know exactly what she can do but that IIC wanted her killed off. 

After the whole gang fighting off the small army of Telar, we've got Teri with a broken leg who's on the verge of death, Matt heading towards the safe house. Sita decides to give Teri her blood against her wishes making her the last living vampire...Yup, you read that write. IIC realized they couldn't fully control Sita so instead they turned the Array on Matt and he ended up 'killing' Sita. Oh look, she dead again. Anyone noticing a common theme? Back to back books of her dying is becoming roadkill at this point. But of course Sita isn't dead. The book ends with Sita in Teri's body. That's a dramatic ending and I am loving it! I'm ready to throw myself into the next book and lose myself in it. 

Rating:

I am going to give this book 4.5 stars on 5. It's no surprise that I didn't like the whole "I'm not dead, it's just your imagination" way of explaining how Sita is still alive. I love the progression of the story even though it was a little bit less fast paced as the previous two books, it still was very action packed, it had lots of new surprises and it wasn't dragging on at all. I'm not really thrilled with Sita 'fake dying' again but in a different manner. I'm excited to see what else Pike can come up with but he doesn't have another lapse in judgement regarding Sita. On a final note, I'm super surprised this hasn't been picked up yet to be adapted onto the big screen. It has action, romance, mystery, all the qualities that makes up a great movie franchise.