The Vampire Diaries
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The Vampire Diaries is a YA horror quartet by L.J. Smith. It was originally made up of three novels, but a fourth one was written later, continuing the series.
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[edit] Characters
Elena is a young woman who is used to getting everything she wants and is known as the ice queen of the school. Armed with the weapons of charm and wit, she has seduced any man that piqued her interest. That is until Stefan came along
Stefan, the only one who seems able to resist her charms, but loves her deeply. Young, dramatic, silent, and mysterious, he's like a drug for Elena. He was born sometime in the Italian Renissance and is the youngest of the two vampire brothers.
Damon is the eldest of the vampire brothers, brash and arrogant. He fought with Stefan over Katherine's affections centuries ago and now he intends on taking Elena. He's dark and sadistic, but also charming and seductive in a dangerous way.
Bonnie is one of Elena's friends, believed to be psychic. She has an odd fascination with druids; and is also a love interest for both Damon and Matt.
Meredith is another one of Elena's friends, and the most level-headed of them all. She is able to stay calm under stressful situations, and is a quiet observer and thinker.
Matt is Elena's ex boyfriend who, despite helping the two out with their struggles, still holds a flame for her. He is strong, loyal, and dependable.
Katherine is the young vampire that tore the two brothers apart in the first place. Childish and naive, she is believed to physically resemble Elena, which was the first spark between Elena and Stefan.
Caroline, is a former friend of Elena's, who has turned against her. She is manipulative and vengeful, and attempts to humiliate Elena in front of their entire school. At the end the reconcile.
Klaus is the vampire that created Katherine, said to be dangerous and powerful;he is evil and wants to destroy Damon and Stefan.
Tyler is a boy who was assaulted by Stefan, after he attempted to rape Elena. He is arrogant, thick-headed, and violent.He becomes friends with Klaus and becomes a werewolf.
[edit] Novels
THE FIRST REPUBLISHED BOOK
*The Awakening
*The Struggle
THE SECOND REPUBLISHED BOOK
*The Fury
*Dark Reunion
[edit] Plot summaries
The series tells the story of Elena Gilbert, a student at an American high school in Virginia, back home from a summer in France. A stranger begins to appear to her and tries to seduce her. After Elena discovers what Stefan really is, he tells her his life story and she discovers that the stranger is Damon, his evil older brother. Stefan did not know he was also in the town, and Elena is sure Damon is responsible for the attacks.
The second book delves further into the theft of Elena's diary, Damon's ongoing attempts to win Elena's affections, and Stefan's struggle to survive. Stefan goes missing and Damon is the prime suspect since the two argued. Elena and her friends find him in a well nearly dead. Elena saves him by giving him some of her blood while the others are out of the room for a moment. Elena also exchanges blood with Damon, though she never willingly did, which causes serious consequences in her life. When waiting for Stefen at the boarding house, she feels as if a presence inside a storm is coming for her and frantically tries to escape by crossing the bridge over a river. The car she is in veers off the road and into the river, and as a result, she drowns. But because she took enough of the brothers' blood, she survives as a vampire.
The third book deals with Elena's confusion at loving both brothers, and she fears she will make the same mistake as the brothers' former love, Katherine, who made both boys into vampires. When Katherine killed herself over her guilt of causing the brothers to hate each other for their shared love for her, they blame each other and kill each other. While having to stay out of the way of the town's new vampire hunter, Alaric, and his gang, the strange power that chased Elena into the river continues to threaten the town. Stefan, Elena, Damon, and Elena's three friends, Bonnie, Meredith, and Matt desperately try to discover what, or who, it is. When Alaric switches sides and begins helping the vampires, Meredith and he fall in love. Finally, they discover that the power is Katherine, who is not only "alive" but extremely powerful. She plans on killing the girl who stole her loves' hearts and then destroying the brothers in revenge, while also tearing apart their town and everyone in it. Elena saves everyone by sacrificing herself by pushing her and Katherine into sunlight and removing Katherine's necklace. The necklace is embedded with lapis lazuli, which is how vampires survive in the sunlight. Both women perished from the exposure.
The fourth book deals with the reactions of everyone six months after Elena's death. This story is primarily in Bonnie's point of view, and she has a dream of Elena telling her blood and hair are important over tea before she turns into a corpse and threatens her. When some girls (Caroline, Sue, Bonnie, and Vickie) have a surprise birthday party for Meredith, things turn bad. The girls decide to contact Elena using a ouija board because of the strange dream Bonnie had. The girls are beginning to suspect that there was another force other than Elena's corrupting the dream. When they make contact with Elena, she tells them there is evil in town with them, and that they are all in danger. She tells them they need to summon someone but gets interrupted while telling them the ingredients. After what appears to be a fight over who is speaking to the girls using the ouija board, Elena tells the girls to run. Before all of the girls can get out of the house, one is thrown off the balcony on the second story and falls to her death. With Sue dead, and Vickie having gone insane from the ordeal, Caroline decides to not help Bonnie and Meredith find out who is causing all of the trouble. With the help of Matt, Bonnie and Meredith realize the two ingredients are blood and hair. So they use the ingredients to make a summoning spell to summon Stefen and Damon. The five work to solve this puzzling and dangerous mystery, with the help of the occasional dream from Elena. Vickie is eventually murdered by this force, and they realize it is the work of the vampire who created Katherine, named Klaus. In the end, after an epic battle that has brought Stefan to the brink of death, Bonnie calls Elena for help. Elena arrives with an armada of undead civil war soldiers and they carry off the evil vampire into death. Elena heals Stefan and the rest of her injured crew, but begins to be sucked away into the official afterlife. After she disappears, a few minutes pass, and then there is a great flash of light, and Elena reappears alive as a human. Stefan and Elena offer Damon a place with them, much like Katherine tried to make the boys do, but Damon refuses, saying he is not like any of them, and leaves to go off on his own again, leaving Stefan and Elena alone for good. Bonnie and Matt appear to get together and Meredith had found her love in Alaric in the previous book.
Thematically, The Vampire Diaries deals with belonging and loyalty. Although she is the most popular girl in school, Elena feels isolated from the other people in Fell's Church. As an orphan, she also doesn't have very close family ties. Stefan, being a vampire and a newcomer to a small town, is also an outsider in the community. As the series progresses, the ties of friendship on which Elena relies start to unravel, and her loyalty to everyone she knows is put to the test.
Harper Teen Publishing Company has started to re-publish the books as of 2007, and they were released, instead of as four books, but as two. They published The Awakening and The Struggle as one book, and The Fury and Dark Reunion as another book. All have been released and are available for purchase.
[edit] A new Diary?
LJ Smith has announced on her website | ljanesmith.net that she is halfway through writing a new Vampire Dairies story, tentatively titled Damon, picking up where Dark Reunion finished. She was also written a short story entitled Blood Will Tell, considering what might have happened had Stefan decided to drink the blood of Matt, Meredith and Bonnie. Scenes from this story expand on the frisson between Bonnie and Damon that was hinted at in Dark Reunion, and which could be expanded on in the fifth book.
