Unnatural
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $0.99
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
In the town of Eden in northwestern England stands the exclusive boarding school known as Archangel Academy. Ancient and imposing, it's a place filled with secrets. Just like its students. . .
For Michael Howard, being plucked from his Nebraska hometown and sent thousands of miles away is as close as he's ever come to a miracle. In Weeping Water, he felt trapped, alone. At Archangel Academy, Michael belongs. And in Ciaran, Penry, and especially Ciaran's enigmatic half-brother Ronan, Michael finds friendship deeper than he's ever known.
But Michael's only beginning to understand what makes the Academy so special. Ronan is a vampire--part of a hybrid clan who are outcasts even among other vampires. Within the Academy's confines exists a ruthless world of deadly rivalries and shifting alliances, of clandestine love and forbidden temptations. And soon Michael will confront the destiny that brought him here--and a danger more powerful than he can imagine. . .
Michael Griffo is an award-winning writer and one of six playwrights whose career will be tracked by WritersInsight.com until 2010. He is a graduate of New York University, has studied at Playwrights Horizons and Gotham Writers Workshop, and has written several screenplays.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this opener to the Archangel Academy series, playwright Griffo borrows many hallmarks of the vampire genre, but with a notable difference. Gay American teenager Michael escapes a life of bullying and abuse when his emotionally disintegrating mother commits suicide and his estranged father enrolls him at Archangel Academy, an all-boys English boarding school. There, he meets the enigmatic, sexy Ronan, and the two boys discover an immediate, mutual attraction. But their newfound relationship is threatened by Michael's disapproving father; Ronan's malevolent ex-boyfriend, Nakamo; and the inscrutable machinations of the vampires who use Archangel Academy for their own ends. As Michael becomes a pawn between two different vampire clans, as represented by Ronan and Nakamo, he has to choose his destiny, if it's not chosen for him first. Unfortunately, this brooding romantic epic is strained by jarring shifts in point-of-view, implausible melodrama, and heavy-handed messages. What could have been a much-needed shot of diversity in the field comes off instead as overwrought and derivative. Ages 14 up
