Book Review: Chain Letter 2 The Ancient Evil by Christopher Pike
Plot: After receiving a chain letter, a group of teens decides it must be a joke–after all, the perpetrator of the original chain letter is dead and buried. But when Fran refuses to perform her “deed”, she is severely punished, and the group realizes that the power behind the letters is still alive.
My Review: I think I’d only read this book once as a teen and I didn’t like it overall. Going into it this time around I couldn’t remember much, but as I kept reading things came back to me.
This one starts out much like the first book. Fran is the first to receive the chain letter. It asks her to drown her puppy, she refuses and is met with a grisly punishment. Another refuses to do their gross deed and is punished, etc etc. All the deeds in this book are “evil” unlike the first book where they were just stupid little things like “flunk this test” or “tell the teachers to go to hell”. That was the main thing I liked about this book, that it was actually horror/horrific. It made things much more interesting. Of course that doesn’t last…
There were two massive problems in this book for me. First of all, its heavily supernatural. The first book was not, but they attempt to tie the two books together with a background story on the man they hit with the car and satanic/witch cults. Its just not my cup of tea especially when the first book had really no hints of this..if it had been this way from the beginning I’d be okay with it. But even at the end of this book there are unanswered questions about the supernatural aspects of the book.
Second of all, all the characters, although recycled from the first book, were completely annoying and unlikable. I get why Pike did this, to introduce the character of “Sasha” and “Eric” and have Tony and Ali at each others throats, but still it was frustrating to listen to almost all of the dialogue in the beginning and some later on. This one’s a whore and this ones a slut. Its just petty I guess.
Overall: So while I liked that the deeds and consequences for not doing the deeds were gory and just what a horror book needs. I couldn’t get past the snobbish characters and supernatural aspect. Chain Letter should have been left as a standalone book.
My Rating: 
Feb 2nd, 2012 at 9:11 am
I can understand. If the first book had those elements to it then the second you would have been prepared. It sounds like a let down. Even if the horror is better still a let down.
Mary