When Jedediah realizes his planet’s sun is dying, he is forced to use forbidden technology to save his colony, but the ship that brings their salvation has a new menace for the Amish.
Note on ratings:
* Horrible.
** Below average
*** Average. Not good or bad.
**** Above average
***** Above and beyond
Content: *** (Content based off my personal level of squeamishness.)
The title and cover should give you a pretty good idea of what happens in the story. It has vampires who drink blood and kill people. There are also people fighting vampires.
Originality and world building: *****
Considering this is the only book about Amish Vampires I’ve ever read, I’d say the idea was pretty original.
The world is fully fleshed out, and the Amish colony idea does make sense. I don’t know enough about Amish to figure out how well Nietz portrayed them, but it felt pretty real.
Characters and their Arcs: ***
The characters were a little hard to relate to, but this is probably because I’m a twenty-something girl and the main character was a forty-something man and Amish at that. I liked him, but never grew particularly attached.
Writing style and Pacing: *****
The pacing is very good. Even though this was a tad outside my genre, and I wasn’t anything like the main character, I had trouble putting the book down.
What I liked:
The writing was really good. This book is proof that pretty much any idea can be written well, even if it’s Amish Vampires. There was also some neat foreshadowing.
What I didn’t like:
The poor Amish nearly got wiped out. I felt sorry for them.
I could also tell the author didn’t agree with the characters’ lifestyle. I don’t know how that could have been avoided considering the plot. It wasn’t preachy, but it was there.
Is it worth reading?
Yes.
My Rating:
Jessi L. Roberts, author 
I haven’t read this book yet, but I wonder if the way it seemed the author disagreed with the Amish lifestyle may also have to do with his take on the Amish genre itself. There was a whole joke with his publishing company that said ‘The only way we’d publish anything Amish is if it was amish vampires from space’. and I guess the author decided to take the idea and run with it. It may be partially an irritation with/a protest to the fact that so many Christian fiction books are Amish Fiction.
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I’ve heard the story. What I’d noticed more was a bit of stuff about how the Amish, or at least this group of Amish, were walling themselves off, which isn’t what Christians are supposed to do, and then their pacifism got shown as bad. I agree with the author’s views on the issues, it just seemed to me that it was a bit too easy to tell where the author stood.
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Yeah. Hopefully I can read this book within the next year or two, since it seems like a fun book to discuss with people.
It does sound like it was poorly written in terms of portraying the Amish philosophy, then. I don’t think authors necessarily have to hide where they stand, just not make it so glaringly obvious that the author’s opposition is what the average reader thinks of when discussing the story. At the very least authors should show that even if they disagree with the characters, they truly understand why the characters feel/act the way they do. If an author shows they disagree with the character, but also writes the character’s story in a way that shows why the character believes the way they do, and that the author still has respect for that character in spite of disagreeing with them…that makes me have a lot more respect for the author. If an author just writes characters with an opposing perspective to subtly bash that character’s philosophy, then the author risks coming off as a bit ignorant and arrogant.
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I don’t think it was poorly written. It did seem visible to me, but he wasn’t bashing Amish, just disagreed with a few things. Considering the plot line, it would have been kind of hard for the issues not to come up since it did involve technology and violence hitting the Amish head on.
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I haven’t read this one, but it just sounds a bit too weird to me. :p Great review! But I don’t think I’ll be picking this one up any time soon.
Alexa
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It’s certainly one of the weirder ones I’ve read, but it’s good. It’s also one that would make an interesting conversation piece.
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I’d like to read this book someday. Part of me wants to know how Nietz pulls of such a wild idea, and part of me wants to read the book in public and see people’s reactions.
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I think it would be fun to be a librarian and try to get the little old ladies that like Amish romance to read it. Or the ones who read Twilight. That’d be funny.
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