I've read and liked this series (not exactly for the romance, mind you) so it surprised me a bit to see it portrayed so negatively on TV Tropes. I just finished the 9th book, and the focus doesn't seem to be on Zoey's Romantic Plot Tumor for a change. And Zoey's reluctance to move on from Heath may have been key to what's happened. At the end of book 8, Neferet was going to sacrifice Zoey's grandma to the Bull of Darkness to gain a powerful servant, but grandma wasn't home. Zoey's mother however, had shown up at the wrong time trying to make amends with her mom and possibly even Zoey too. Neferet ends up killing Zoey's mom in place of her grandma, but Darkness says the sacrifice was "imperfect" and thus the creation may be flawed. Nix exploited this weakness to put Heath's soul into Neferet's servant. Heath barely remembers anything, but his feelings for Zoey allowed him to fight the control of Neferet and Darkness just enough to spare the lives of Zoey's friends. To top it all off, the main focus of the story seemed to be around the recent murder of Zoey's mom, finding out who had done it and why, and partly about Rephiam coming to terms with Nix's gift to him and his separation from his father. There's also a surprising bit of character development for Shawnee. Dragon gets served with Redemption Equals Death and he and Anastasia are Together in Death. Eric Tracks and Marks his first fledgling, and she gets her eyesight restored, a rare gift from Nix, and a red mark in the process. Neferet is exposed to a representative of the High Council, and displaced as a High Priestess. And it looks like Kalona is leaning towards an eventual Heal Face Turn, or at least an Enemy Mine against Neferet because he pledged an Oath to Thanatos agreeing to serve as the new Sword Master for the Tulsa House of Night now that Dragon is gone. Oh, and there's implications that Neferet may have killed Zoey's cat too...
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It's the thanks to the Romantic Plot Tumor like in Twilight.
Edited by silvercover
Plus the casual racism and slut-shaming. Don't forget those.
What's precedent ever done for us?
True, there are faults, and there are things I don't like about the series, but no series is perfect. As of the 9th book, the Romantic Plot Tumor seems to have shrunk, since 2 of the original 4 guys for Zoey are dead, and Stark seems to have pretty much got the girl. It remains to be seen how things will play out in regards to Heath's rebirth. He clearly doesn't retain his memories, but he knows Zoey on a subconscious level and it's those feelings that let him fight Neferet. Perhaps his is a case of Heart Is an Awesome Power? For all I know, maybe Heath's role in the Romantic Plot Tumor was actually setting up the current situation so he could be the Enemy Within of Neferet's Vessle all along.
It just feels to me like some of the worse offenses I see listed here are getting better as time goes by, and the main page doesn't seem quite up to date. I have thought about putting entries myself, but I'm not that great at identifying tropes, or I'm a bit afraid others may not take kindly to me posting anything positive about this series.
The problem is that this series into it's ninth book and only just resolving these serious writting and story structure problems. On PC Cast's blog one of the major things she reccomends is doing a writing course and one of the first things that a good writing course will tell you is to avoid sterotypes, resolve major plot points and never use Deus Ex Machina, all of which this series is rife with. It's especially jarring as PC Cast used to be an English teacher. The Cast duo have exchanged quality of writing to simply pumping them out as quickly as possible.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading this series, but it fails to capitalise on it's massive potential and raises more confusing questions than it answers. Like where is Zoey's older sister and younger brother now living that their mother is dead? Are they still living with Zoey's step-dad? Was there even going to be a funneral? Why is all this drama happening in the space of five days?
By all means, please update any TV tropes to the page that you see fit, you're right it does need updating.
Since when was there a 'the' in the title?